Complicated
by Septembrisms
Summary: "I know you've been through a lot, but maybe you should think about the possibility that something nice might happen to you."
1. Chapter 1

**Can't believe I remembered the password for this account. Wild. Anyway, here's this, and I just want to warn you right off the jump here that there's no hockey players in this story until Chapter 3, and I'm very sorry about that. After that point it's basically a boy festival in here, I swear. Okay, here we go.**

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 **Chapter 1 - July 22 - 24, 1979**

It was just starting to rain in Everett, Washington as Sandy Benton loaded another full box into the trunk of her car. She looked up at the sky and let out a groan, looking over at the few remaining boxes that had been left out on the front walk, feet away from the shelter of Ray's covered porch. Ray himself sat on the edge of the top step, sipping a steaming cup of coffee. Sandy stared at him across the yard. "So, your plan is to not help at all?"

Ray shrugged and said nothing.

Sandy slammed the trunk shut and sprinted back across the lawn to where the boxes were. "Nice to see you taking the high road. I thought _you_ were the adult here," she huffed at him, hefting another box into her arms and moving as quickly as she could back over to the car. She set it down on the grass and pulled open the rear door.

Ray was suddenly behind her, holding the final two boxes in his arms. "Just—just move," he said. Sandy stepped aside and Ray shoved both boxes across the back seat, against the door on the other side. He easily picked up the box Sandy had set on the wet grass and slid it in as well. "Maybe if you didn't make such a production out of moving these out here it wouldn't have taken you an hour and a half. You knew it was gonna rain."

Sandy glared at him. "I'm making a production out of it because they're _heavy_ , Ray. And you don't have to stand out here and watch me like a smug asshole if you don't want to help."

Ray threw his hands up. "Why should I help you move out? I don't want you to move out. I didn't really get a say in whether or not you would—" He stopped talking abruptly as their neighbour, Paul, suddenly left his house.

"Mornin' Ray, mornin' Sandy," the jovial old man said, lifting a coffee cup up in greeting.

"Good morning," Ray said, and Sandy waved, begrudgingly.

Paul ducked his head, squinting up at the sky. "Looks like a good day to be inside, huh?"

"Tell that to this one," Ray replied, jerking his thumb in Sandy's direction. She elbowed him.

Paul, noticing Ray taking an angry step away from Sandy, wisely retreated back into his house. The neighbours didn't know about Sandy moving out. She supposed that the spectacle of them fighting out on the front lawn while hauling boxes to Sandy's car at 6:30 in the morning was a fairly damning clue, but Ray hadn't mentioned anything to anyone, a fact for which Sandy was grateful. The neighbourhood was made up of mostly retirement-aged people who had been fascinated by the idea of Sandy and Ray's relationship since she had moved in a year and a half earlier. Sandy had noticed that the age difference between herself and Ray had been disproportionately interesting to them, having heard the judgmental edge to their voices when they asked her what her future plans were, and oh isn't it nice for you to just be able to stay home while Ray goes off to work. Ray had warned her to be tolerant, to not worry about what gossipy older women thought, but this was a tall order.

Once Paul was safely out of earshot, Ray rounded on Sandy again. "Don't _hit_ me," he hissed. "Who's not being an adult now?"

Sandy pointed at herself. "Me. It's me. You decided to make this ugly and—and urgent. It didn't need to be like this. Just be aware of that when you go back in there by yourself." The rain had gradually started coming down harder, and she swiped at her forehead to get her bangs out of her eyes.

When it had been decided that Sandy and Ray would no longer be together (a decision that Sandy had made on her own), Ray had retaliated by telling her that she had a week to move out of the house, knowing that she had no where to go. This had, Sandy imagined, been a tactic to try and make her reconsider and ultimately stay, but it had backfired and Sandy had packed up her things in two days. She could have done it faster, but there had been considerable time wasted on fighting with Ray. With no concrete plan in place, she had phoned her brother, her very last resort.

Ray gaped at her. "I didn't think you'd decide to disappear to Minnesota. I thought you'd go stay with your parents. I thought I'd have some more time to change your mind. You know, if you decided right now to come back inside, I'd—"

"I can't do that," Sandy said, shaking her head. "And don't talk nonsense. You know I'm not going to go back to my parents after everything they did. I don't have a choice. I can't get a job here on this short notice. I'm not educated and I'm not skilled at anything. My only job experience is with my dad, and I don't think he's giving me a good reference, Ray. I need to get away from here."

As she spoke, Ray listened to her with a sad expression on his face. "I wish you'd just stay and think about this a little while longer."

She shook her head again. "I can't, because then I'd change my mind. And I really think this is the right thing to do." She closed the rear door of the car and took a step closer to him. He stepped backwards and away from her, onto the lawn. "You know I'm sorry, right?"

Ray folded his arms and nodded. "Yeah, I know. And I'm sorry I scared you off. I'm sorry you feel like you have to go to fuckin' Minnesota to get away from me."

Sandy covered her face and laughed, partly to cover up the tears that had sprung to her eyes. When she uncovered them, she saw that Ray also had his face in his hands. "Will you be okay?" she asked.

He sniffed and exhaled loudly, dropping his arms to his sides. "Nope," he said. "But don't worry about it. You'd better get going—you've got a long drive ahead of you."

Sandy gazed over his shoulder at the house, the ranch-style home that Ray had already lived in for nearly ten years when she met him. This had been her home for what seemed like a lot longer than it had actually been. Her life with Ray was what felt _normal_ , and she felt an overwhelming sense of inertia holding her in place on the sidewalk. After a long moment, the silence punctuated by the sound of rain hitting pavement, she took another step closer to Ray, and this time he didn't move. "Can I get a hug before I go?"

Ray swung his hands up, clapped them together, and then spread his arms. "Bring it in here." He wrapped his arms around Sandy and squeezed her like he was trying to incorporate her into his body. She would normally have complained about not being able to breathe, but Sandy was too preoccupied with trying to memorize the way Ray smelled at that moment, a combination of the early morning coffee he had been drinking on the porch and laundry detergent. "Please drive safe," he said into her hair. Then he patted her twice on the back and released her.

She backed up against the car. "Bye, Ray."

"You be good, kiddo."

Sandy got into the car and pulled out onto the street, glancing every few seconds into the rear view mirror at Ray standing on the lawn. He was still out there when she turned the corner.

The drive from Ray's house on the outskirts of Everett to Burnsville, where Sandy's older brother Will (who was a medical student at the University of Minnesota) lived with his wife Jenny (who taught the fifth grade at an elementary school in Burnsville) was a roughly thirty hour slog that Sandy was dreading with every fibre of her being. She had been tempted to just pack a suitcase, dump everything non-essential in a heap on her parents' front step, and fly out, but Will had mentioned needing a replacement car after theirs had died earlier in the summer. "We'll call it even on rent for a few months if we can split use of your car," he had said, ever the negotiator. And so driving it was.

It took almost three days for Sandy to make the trip. Her original plan had been to separate the distance into two days of straight driving, but just how unrealistic that really was set in after about five hours alone in the car. She had travelled before with her family, but those had been trips to the beach, with conversation, little games, and puzzles to entertain her in the back seat. Now, Sandy had no one's company but her own, and she found her thoughts, combined with the monotony of the highway and the radio, exhausting. The result of this was that Sandy had to stop to sleep twice—once in Billings, Montana (she stayed in a cheap and slightly seedy motel on the outskirts of the city where she turned up the volume on old episodes of M*A*S*H to drown out the sounds of the traffic flying by and people talking loudly in the parking lot), and once in Fargo, North Dakota. Her amended plan was to make the rest of the drive after Billings in one day, but this plan was further amended by Sandy falling asleep at the wheel and swerving momentarily into oncoming traffic. She pulled into a truck stop in the early afternoon.

Sandy put some gas in her long-suffering car and went inside the convenience store, where she bought some coffee in a flimsy paper cup. She couldn't help but feel as if the elderly woman working at the store was giving her a sympathetic look as she paid. When Sandy caught a glimpse of herself in the glass door as she was leaving, she understood why, seeing herself looking gaunt and possibly dead.

She called Will from the payphone outside of the store to tell him where she was. "Fargo? That's, what, another four hours from here?" he asked.

"I think so. I might have a nap here to bring myself back to life a little bit, but I'll definitely be there tonight."

She heard Will breathe a sigh of relief. "Good. That's good. I've been worried about you out on the road for this long. Have there been any issues getting gas?"

"Not really," Sandy said. "There's been lines and there's really nothing in the small towns, but I've been topping up in the cities, like you and Ray told me to do." She stumbled a little on the normalcy of saying Ray's name.

If Will had noticed, he made no indication of it. "Good to hear. Anyway, you just take your time heading out and we'll leave the back door unlocked for you when you get here."

Sandy rested her head against the hard plastic of the payphone's box. "Okay. Thanks for letting me come out there, Will. It really means a lot."

Will was quiet for a moment. "Yeah, I know. It'll be good to have you here. Jenny's excited to have you around. I am too."

They hung up a moment later, and Sandy returned to her car and sat, slightly reclined, in her driver's seat. "Just an hour," she said to herself. "Just sit and watch the traffic for an hour and you'll feel better. Drink your coffee. It'll be okay."

When she awoke several hours later to the sound of the woman from the convenience store knocking on her window, it was dark outside and her coffee was ice cold. "Miss?" she was saying. "Miss, are you all right?"

She wasn't. But Sandy went inside, bought a replacement coffee, and closed the final, two-hundred and fifty mile distance between Fargo and her final destination of Burnsville, a suburb community with the lights of Minneapolis shining distantly to the north. It was nearly three in the morning as she pulled onto Will's street. She parked the car with a sense of finality, leaned her head back against the headrest, and looked over at the house. It was a one-storey bungalow with plain white siding and large windows. She'd only seen it in pictures that Will had mailed to her. The last time she'd been to Minnesota, he and Jenny were living in a sad rental in a bad neighborhood in Minneapolis. Sandy hadn't seen Will in about a year and a half, since the last time they'd all been together at their parents' place. They'd talked on the phone every so often, but those conversations mostly comprised of small talk where Sandy felt like Will tried to extract details about how Sandy was doing for their mother. The seven years of age difference between Will and Sandy meant that the two of them had never really had much in common. The warmest Sandy had felt about her brother was when he sent her a card with fifty dollars stuffed into it when she graduated high school and signed it with love.

Sandy left all her things in the car, thinking it didn't make much sense to haul everything in at this time of night. As per Will's instructions, she went around the house, let herself in through the back door and found herself in the kitchen. The house was dark and completely silent, which wasn't surprising considering the hour. What did surprise Sandy was how tired she suddenly was. She crossed into the living room to the couch and flopped down on it. Sandy was sleeping before she was able to register that she had landed on a mess of papers and books. It was the most comfortable bed she'd ever slept on.

"... and I'm going to need that book later tonight, Jay. What am I supposed to do?"

"You don't _need_ anything. It's July, take a summer break. Let's just leave her for the night—she's exhausted."

"Do you think we can get her shoes off without her waking up?"

"Will, I said just leave her alone."

Awakened by the sound of voices, Sandy raised her head from the couch, a sheet of paper sticking to her cheek. Jenny and Will were hovering nearby, staring down at her. "Hi," Will said.

Sandy pushed herself up into a sitting position, rubbing her eyes. "Hi. Sorry, I didn't mean to lay down on all your stuff," she said. "What time is it?"

Jenny grabbed Will's wrist and looked at his watch. "It's about ten. You've been out all day."

"Ten? Ten at night?" They nodded, and Sandy looked out the front window, alarmed. It was dark outside again. She did the math quickly in her head. "I was asleep for eighteen hours?"

Will nodded. "Yeah. We thought maybe you'd sleep all the way through the night. You kind of scared the hell out of us when we came out here this morning—we didn't hear you come in. What time did you get here?"

"Late. I fell asleep for a while in North Dakota and that slowed me down a little. I—" she paused, noticing stacks of boxes lining the hallway behind them. "Is that all from my car?"

Will glanced back over his shoulder. "We figured we'd better take it all out of there and save you the trouble. You just dropped your keys near the door. Are you sure that's all there was?"

Sandy nodded. "Thanks, guys." She stood up and stretched, feeling intense stiffness in her back and knees from sitting in the car for so long. "I think it's safe to say I'm staying here for the rest of my life. I never want to make that drive, ever again."

Jenny laughed, but Will was looking over at Sandy with concern. "Are you hungry?" he asked. "We made dinner a while ago and there's a plate for you."

At his words, Sandy realized that she was starving. "That sounds great," she said. Will disappeared into the kitchen and she heard him put something into the microwave. Jenny moved to clear up the papers and books on the couch, and Sandy crossed the room to the window and peered out at the street, feeling like she'd skipped a day of her life.

"You know," Will called from the kitchen, "I called Mom this morning and told her you made it here all right, and she said she had no idea you were driving out. Do you want to talk about that at all?"

Sandy frowned at Jenny, who shrugged and rolled her eyes. "Not really. I didn't think they'd care."

Will poked his head around the corner and narrowed his eyes at her. "Don't be dramatic. Of course they care. They're our parents."

"They're _your_ parents," Sandy said.

"Come on, don't be—"

"Don't tell me not to be dramatic," she interrupted him. "They said some pretty awful things when they could have tried to be supportive, and so I don't really have anything to say to them."

Will and Jenny exchanged a look. "Well," Will said, "that'll probably be a little awkward when they fly out for a week at the end of October. But I guess we'll deal with that then. What?" he burst out, seeing the sour expression on Sandy's face. "I can't have a good relationship with my parents just because you don't?"

Sandy folded her arms. "No, you can. You can do whatever you want. I'll figure something out. Do we really have to talk about this right now?"

"Of course we don't," Jenny said, flapping her hands at Will to make him return to the kitchen as the microwave beeped. "Don't worry about it," she muttered, and then straightened up and clapped her hands together. "Okay, _anyway_ , why don't I show you where you're sleeping?"

Jenny took Sandy down the hallway to what she described as the larger of the two free bedrooms. "We already had a spare bed, and I was able to cobble together some furniture from some people I work with on short notice," Jenny explained, gesturing at a dresser with chipped blue paint and a nightstand covered in pale green. "They don't really match, and they came from kids' bedrooms. I hope you don't mind."

"No, it's great, thanks," Sandy said. "I was kind of worried about that—I don't really own any furniture."

"Well, there's a closet too," Jenny told her, pointing to it. "We put some hangers in it and everything. I hope we didn't forget anything but—well, if we did, just let us know." She smiled warmly at Sandy, put her hand on her shoulder and shook it slightly. "Don't let Will bug you. It's just his way of letting you know that he cares."

Sandy shrugged. "I'm kind of used to my family's special brand of love." She heard, in her head, Will's voice telling her not to be dramatic again, and added, "I know he means well."

Jenny let out a sigh. "He does his best. I'm hoping having you here will be good for him. He needs a little perspective, I think. But he really is glad that you're here, Sandy. So am I."

Sandy had heard some form of this sentiment from the two of them almost constantly since it was decided that she would stay with them, but she was grateful to hear it. She felt like they were overcompensating for what her parents lacked, and while she felt a little uncomfortable about that, she was glad that someone was trying. Sandy had never really been close with Jenny. She was the same age as Will, and had been a part of Sandy's life since she was a kid, but Jenny had always seemed to inhabit a much more adult space. But now, standing in the empty bedroom with her, Sandy was glad that Jenny was there to be a buffer between herself and Will. "Thanks," Sandy said. "I'm happy to be here, too." She let herself be pulled into a hug. She relaxed for what seemed like the first time since she left Washington, and felt Jenny's shoulders shaking. "Are—are you—?"

Jenny broke away, wiping her eyes. "Yeah, I'm okay. Sorry. I was just—"

"Sandy, your food is getting cold!" Will's voice rang out from the kitchen, making them both jump. Jenny smiled at Sandy, put her finger to her lips and disappeared into the hallway, leaving Sandy mystified.

Once Sandy had finished eating, Will and Jenny went to bed, leaving Sandy to start unpacking her things. She dug through the boxes and pulled out her track shoes, the tattered Brooks trainers she'd kept after high school with the intention to start running again. Sandy had been pursued, albeit gently, by college reps during her senior year for track, but they had all been scared away by her lack of discipline. She had been offended by this at the time, but, looking at the layer of dust on the shoes, Sandy had to agree. She set them near the door of the bedroom, thinking that there was no better time to try and get back into shape than immediately after moving to a new state where she knew no one.

She put clothes away into the closet and dresser for a half an hour before she happened upon one of Ray's shirts that she figured she must have packed by mistake.

She sat down on the bed, cradling the shirt in her hands. It was just a plain black t-shirt with a hole in the left shoulder, but to Sandy it might as well have been an album full of photographs. She could remember, suddenly, dozens of memories in which Ray wore this shirt. She remembered a hiking trip at Mt. Ranier, when Ray insisted on carrying both of their backpacks up the trail but had to sit down every five minutes because it was all too heavy. It was a hazy, faded memory, but Sandy was fairly sure that Ray had been wearing this exact black shirt that day. She suddenly felt very homesick.

Sandy continued to sit there, feeling an intense emotional connection with a plain black t-shirt for a while. Eventually, she looked over at the clock on the nightstand and saw that it was nearly midnight. It was still relatively early in Everett. Ray would probably still be awake. Sandy stood up abruptly, dropping the shirt on the carpet. "Stop it," she said, out loud, to herself. What was the point of continuing to hold on? You made your choice, Sandy thought. You drove all the way out here. This was the right move. And if not... well, you're here.

The lights were off in the house when Sandy came out of her room, carrying the shirt with her, but this time she knew where she was going in the dark. She opened the side door and hurried around the porch to where the trash cans were. She lifted the lid off one, dropped the shirt inside, and went back into the house.

And later, just before Sandy was about to drop off to sleep, she suddenly remembered that Ray had been wearing a plaid shirt on the day they went hiking.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2 - August 2 -4, 1979**

Will poked his head into Sandy's bedroom. "You feel like coming for a drive to campus? I have to go meet with an advisor for a little while this afternoon."

It had been a week since she'd moved in, but during that time Sandy had been to the University of Minnesota campus (or the U as Will insisted she call it) a few times with Will, who was constantly needing to go there. She didn't mind, because she enjoyed watching the crowds of harried, stressed people walking around there, even in the summer, but she assumed that Will took her there to try and inspire her to go to college. His attempts weren't working, but she wasn't planning on telling him that. "Sure," she said.

The drive from the house to campus took about a half an hour, and as they passed over the Minnesota River, Will said, "make a wish." It was something their parents had always done when driving over a bridge, a superstition based on nothing in which Sandy (and evidently Will also) had always indulged. Sandy closed her eyes and wished that she could meet another person, just one other person in this new place so that she wouldn't have to spend all her time with Will and Jenny. When she opened her eyes, Will was grinning over at her. "I wished for my advisor to tell me that I'm going to have a more manageable course load this year."

Sandy raised her eyebrows at him. "You know it won't come true if you tell someone what you wished for, right?"

He laughed. "I think the trick is to wish for something that's likely to come true. That way it doesn't matter if you tell someone, because it was going to happen anyway."

"I think it's cheating for you to be able to make a wish every time you go over _this_ bridge. You go over it every day."

Will shrugged. "Hey, I don't make the rules."

When they arrived on campus, she followed Will to the building he most often frequented there, an ugly building called Moos Tower, and he left her seated on a row of benches near the door with instructions to, "just take it easy for a while." After Sandy had been there for about fifteen minutes, another girl walked through the doors and settled down on a bench near where Sandy was sitting. She was very tall, with vibrant red hair and a face full of freckles, and she looked to be about Sandy's age. Sandy peered over at this girl, and noticed after a moment that she would straighten her posture and fluff up her hair whenever men would walk past.

After this had happened three times, the girl glanced over and caught Sandy looking. She grinned. "You're clearly not a student either," she said. "I'm just doing a better job than you are."

Sandy blinked. "Pardon?"

The girl got up and moved to sit next to Sandy on her bench. "I hope it's okay if I sit. We can pretend we're here together and hopefully nobody asks." Seeing Sandy's confused expression, the girl smiled again. "The _men_ ," she said emphatically, gesturing at a couple of them as they walked past, deep in conversation. The men glanced at them and started to walk faster. "A lot of girls I know like to hang around with the guys on the sports teams—you know, the football and the hockey and everything, but I think with them it's too likely you attract one that never goes anywhere or does anything important. Do you know what the odds are that someone will go on from college sports to playing pro? Not good. A lot of them just quit and get jobs at banks or something stupid. You know?"

"I'm just waiting for my brother, actually," Sandy told her. "He's meeting with an advisor," she added, even though it seemed doubtful that this stranger cared.

At her words, the girl's eyes opened wide. "Your brother, really? Is he in med?"

"Uh-huh."

"So do you know other med students?"

Sandy shook her head. "And he's married."

The girl folded her arms. "Well, you should have said so. I'm not _that_ kind of girl. I'm Diane, by the way." She held out a hand. "You can call me Di."

They shook hands. "I'm Sandy. So you're here to... meet a guy?"

Di shook her head, paused, and then nodded, giggling. "I guess kind of. I figure if I'm going to meet somebody at some point, it might as well be somebody who's going to be a doctor. So I'm trying to tempt fate in a very specific direction. It's kind of silly, but I've gone on some fun dates with people I've met here. Don't knock it until you try it," she said, catching the expression on Sandy's face. "So you really don't know any other students?"

"No. I'm not from here—I just moved from Washington a week ago," Sandy said. "I moved in with my brother and his wife. He's not really the sociable type, anyway. I doubt he spends much time with people he goes to school with."

"Well," Di said. "what's the point, then? Anyway, Washington, huh? DC or state?

"State."

"Oooh, near the coast! What made you want to move here?"

Sandy shrugged, considering how much she wanted to reveal. "I just felt like a change of scenery," she said after a moment, hearing how stupid this sounded in her voice and seeing it on Di's face. "I didn't really have much going on back home, and so I just thought it would be nice to try something different for a while. Will and Jenny were nice enough to let me come stay with them, and it's been interesting so far."

"How come? Is it really different from home?"

Sandy thought about this. In the short amount of time that she had been living there, she'd noticed that Jenny was acting oddly. A few days prior, she'd gone into the washroom in the morning and turned the light on to find Jenny in there, fast asleep on the floor, basically wrapped around the toilet. She had tried to leave quietly, but the light had startled Jenny awake and she'd sprung to her feet. Jenny had left the washroom without a word, but not before putting her finger to her lips in the same way she had done the day Sandy had moved in. She wasn't sure what secret she was supposed to be keeping, but Sandy hadn't mentioned it to Will. If his wife wanted to sleep in the bathroom, that was something between the two of them, she thought. "No." She shook her head. "It's pretty similar, but my brother is a lot older than me so I didn't really spend much time with him growing up, and they didn't come back to Washington that often, so it's just different being around them all the time. Do you have any brothers or sisters?"

Di nodded. "I have a sister. But she's twenty-two, so just three years older than I am. We were pretty close when we were kids. Maybe that's just because we're both girls. What do you think? Are you close with your brother's wife?"

Prior to being in a situation where she saw Jenny every day, Sandy would have said that Jenny was a fairly bland person. She hadn't gotten to know her very well before she and Will had moved to Minnesota, and although she had been a member of Jenny's wedding party, Sandy knew that this was more of a formality than anything. Her present odd behaviour aside, Jenny had proven herself to be a lot more fun than Sandy had expected. She teased Will about his obsessive tendencies and got Sandy to come out shopping and for ice cream with her. Sandy shrugged. "I think I will be now that I'm living here. I never really had much to do with her before."

"Oh. Well, maybe she was jealous of your gorgeous blonde hair," Di said, reaching out and fluffing a handful of it. She grinned. Three men walked into the building and, noticing them, Di giggled loudly and mussed her hair up again. She stuck her tongue out at their backs as they continued walking without paying attention to the girls. Di turned back to Sandy. "Do you think I'm a bit much?"

Taken aback by the blunt question, Sandy laughed. "I think you're a lot more outgoing than I am, but it's not a bad thing. You're fun."

Di beamed. " _You're_ sweet. I'm just doing what my sister taught me, and you should see the results she gets. You know what?" She drew her legs up underneath her on the bench, turning her entire body to face Sandy. "The other night she came home from the bar and told me that she ran into some guys who played for the North Stars. The Minnesota North Stars. In the NHL," she supplied, when Sandy didn't understand the enormity of this. "You really _aren't_ from here, are you? Anyway, these guys told her they had a buddy waiting for them in their car because he wasn't old enough to get in. I guess he was just nineteen or twenty or something like that. She was there with a couple of her girlfriends and one of them really knows a lot about hockey—she's from Canada, you know, and she told my sister—her name's Beth, that this guy was a big deal. So these guys told Beth that she should go out there and... you know, hang out with him for a while."

"And she did it?" Sandy asked, raising her eyebrows.

"Yes!" Di nodded. "She went out there, and I guess this kid was absolutely _not_ into the idea and so she didn't _make_ him do stuff or anything like that, but she said she had so much fun." She sighed dreamily. "I can't wait until I'm old enough to go into bars."

If this had been the point of the story, Sandy had missed it. If anything, it sounded like a cautionary tale about the things that might happen to a person if they were nice enough to drive their friends somewhere. But she didn't have a single friend in Minnesota other than family, and she felt like it would be bad luck to refuse a friend that had been so clearly provided by her bridge wish. And so she grinned. "Well, I turn twenty-one in October, so maybe we can get you a fake ID and we'll go together some time."

"Oh _no_ ," Di said, shaking her head. "Our dad is a cop. If I ever got caught drinking before I turn twenty-one, there would be some serious hell to pay. I'm not a prude or anything, though," she told Sandy, somewhat unnecessarily. "Hey, since you just moved here, are you looking for a job?"

Sandy had been planning to find something at some point after she got "settled," whatever that meant. That was definitely part of the deal when she moved to Minnesota. "Kind of," she said. "Why?"

"A friend of my dad's owns a little grocery store. I work there, and when the school year ended, the poor guy lost half his staff to people moving out of state, so he's looking for somebody. You should definitely come work there—it's a blast. It doesn't really get busy, so we'd get to talk and hang around a lot. Sound like fun?" She grinned expectantly at Sandy.

"It does," Sandy said. "What's it called? How would I apply?"

Di dismissed her questions with a wave of her hand. "You might have to come in and meet the owner, but he basically lets me pick who they hire as long as people aren't stealing or drinking on the job." She giggled. "And you don't really seem like the type. Here." Di opened her purse and pulled out a pen and a small notebook. She scribbled a phone number down on a page and handed the book and pen to Sandy. "Take my number and write down yours. I'll call you in a few days once I talk to him and I'll let you know what he says."

Sandy nodded, ripping the page out of the notebook and writing her own number down on a blank page. "Thanks for asking for me. I really have no idea where to start in terms of finding a job here. I'm qualified for nothing, basically."

"Me either!" Di laughed again. "I want to come back here and go to college, but not for a couple of years. I feel like I _just_ finished high school." She grinned at Sandy. "At least I can come here even if I'm not a student."

Will came walking down a hallway, accompanied by a middle aged man with thinning hair. "... anyway, just call me if anything comes up," Will was saying to the man. They shook hands, and the man left.

"Is that your brother?" Di whispered, and Sandy nodded, waving at Will as he came over.

"Looks like you wasted no time making friends here," Will said, apparently forgetting the times he had brought Sandy there before, when she had sat alone the entire time and spoken to no one. He puffed his chest out and grinned at them. "Will Benton," he said, reaching out for Di's hand.

They shook. "Di Richards," Di said, pumping Will's hand up and down.

"Are you here getting ready for September, too?"

Di giggled. "Oh no, I'm not a student," she said, exchanging a look with Sandy.

"Di has a lead on a job for me," Sandy told Will.

This seemed to cushion the blow of finding out that Sandy was not rubbing elbows with fellow collegians, and he suddenly looked thrilled. "That's great," he said. "Where at?"

Di explained the grocery store situation to him and if he was unimpressed by it, Will gave no indication. Later, after they had said goodbye to Di (with her promising to call Sandy in the coming days) and had returned to the car, Sandy noticed her brother looking over at her with an odd expression on his face. "What?" she said.

He looked away, startled, and shook his head. "Nothing. I'm just... I'm happy that you're starting to get settled. We were worried you'd be out of sorts for a long time, what with the Ray of it all."

"I'm still working through the effects of the 'Ray of it all,'" Sandy told him. "You know, my Bridge Wish was actually that I'd meet somebody to talk to."

Will laughed. "Well, what do you know? Maybe it _is_ cheap for me to use that one every day. My advisor told me I'm going to have a good year in terms of courses."

"What do you know?" Sandy echoed, grinning.

"I guess that's one thing you can be thankful to Mom and Dad for, huh?" He looked over at Sandy and, seeing the expression on her face, scoffed. "Can you at least tell me what they said to you? I really would like to know."

Sandy had always avoided talking specifics about the last conversation she had had with her parents. She knew how much Will loved them, especially their mother, and she didn't want to sour his opinion of them. She shook her head. "I could, but I'm not going to. You can ask them if you really want to know. Just suffice it to say that it was bad, and you should be happy that you're the kid they're proud of."

Will was quiet for the rest of the drive back to the house. As he pulled into the driveway and parked the car, he looked over at Sandy. "I wish they'd given you a chance to make them proud."

Taken aback by this oddly tender statement, Sandy laughed uneasily. "Me too."

Two days later, while Will and Jenny were out having dinner together and Sandy was sprawled out on the couch watching television, the phone rang, and it was Di. "I talked to Mr. Lawson yesterday and he said you should come out and work a shift sometime next week to see how you like it. He said I'd need to interview you, but I'm definitely not doing that. You're as good as hired."

"He didn't even want to meet with me first?" Sandy asked, surprised.

Di giggled. "Oh, I'm very trustworthy," she said. "I told him your brother was going to be a doctor, and I think that helped. I hope that's okay."

"I mean, whatever helps."

The two of them chatted for a while, and then Di said, "hey, do you want to come with me to a movie tonight?"

"Sure," Sandy said. "What are we seeing?"

"Do you like scary movies?" Di asked. " _The Amityville Horror_ just came out and I've been wanting to see it but everybody I know is too chicken to come with me."

Sandy weighed her options. On one hand, she did not like scary movies. On the other, Di had just set her up with a job and was poised to be her first Minnesotan friend. "Sounds like fun."

* * *

 **Okay, so now we're done posturing and we're ready for it to be boy time. In the meantime, you gotta check out** ** _at least_** **the trailer for** ** _the Amityville Horror_** **from 1979,** **because my friends, it's Something Else.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3 - August 16th, 1979**

Di warned Sandy on the morning of her first shift at Lawson's Family Grocer that their initial training session would have an audience. "Mr. Lawson isn't usually around but he wants to make sure you're okay before officially hiring you," she said, putting the loop of a blue apron over Sandy's head. "Tie that," she instructed. "He's trying to look like he's a hands-on kind of owner, and so he'll be hanging around today." Di straightened up, appraised Sandy and her apron, and clapped her hands together. "Looks great. The first thing I'll do is show you how to bag stuff. That's about as exciting as it gets around here."

They waited at the register for about fifteen minutes for a customer to come through. Eventually, a woman and her son walked up, laden down with a cart full of food. "Okay, great," Di said, glancing at Mr. Lawson, a portly man with a mustache who was unconvincingly pretending to straighten out a rack of magazines. "So, you're going to want to put everything into one of four groups and put things in the same group together. "Produce," she said, grabbing a bag of apples, "colds," she pointed at the milk and some frozen vegetables, "meat, but she doesn't have any, and then pantry stuff." Di indicated a box of animal crackers. "I'll scan, and you put everything into bags."

While Sandy stuffed items from the four groups into their own separate paper bags, Di chatted charmingly to the lady, who was watching Sandy's progress warily. It wasn't hard work, but Sandy felt oddly under pressure with the shopper, Di, and Mr. Lawson watching her. Get it together, she told herself, taking a deep breath. It's putting food into bags. You're not totally incompetent. She exhaled and managed to smile at the shopper's child, who was whining to his mother about wanting candy.

Once the woman had left, the phone started ringing in the back and Mr. Lawson wandered off to answer it. Di turned to Sandy and grinned. "See? Totally easy, right? Mr. Lawson didn't seem to have a problem with you, either. I've seen him rip the bags out of someone's hands because he didn't think they were going fast enough."

Sandy rolled her eyes. "If he's so particular, why can't he just do it all himself?"

"Well, that would seriously cut into his afternoon television shows," Di giggled. "Anyway, it's much lower stakes here usually. He only ever shows up when someone new starts, when he gets to fire somebody, or when he wants to pick up something to eat for dinner." She looked expectantly at Sandy. "So what do you think?"

"It seems like fun." Sandy smiled. "Really, thanks for working this out for me. You didn't have to do that. You don't even really know me."

Di waved her hand dismissively. "It's nothing. It'll be a nice change around here. The usual crowd is high school boys who think they're casanovas because they play on the first line of their hockey team. We're going to have a lot of fun, trust me."

They spent the rest of the morning working between the cash register and stocking shelves. Sometime around noon, Mr. Lawson came out from behind the end of the aisle where the girls were standing, straightening cans to make their labels face outward. "Well, ladies, I think I might head out," he said, patting himself on the belly. "Got a few errands to run before I go home. Think you'll be able to hold down the fort?" He raised his eyebrows at Di, whose laugh echoed around the almost completely empty store.

"I think we can handle it," she replied. "Will Sandy be coming back from now on?"

Mr. Lawson took a moment to really consider this. "I think that's a great idea," he said finally. "You can sort it out on the calendar, right?" He seemed to be addressing both of them.

"No problem," Di said, and Sandy nodded.

After he had gone and the girls had sorted out the days that Sandy would come in (Di worked it out so the two of the would be working together more often than not, and the rest of the time was given to working with another store employee, a woman named Charlotte who Di described as "a real bag") Di lead Sandy to the office, which was situated near the front of the store with a large window from which to watch for customers. She wriggled out of her apron. "This thing always chafes the back of my neck," she said.

Sandy pulled hers off, too, and rubbed the spot where the stiff neck strap had been rubbing uncomfortably. "So this is working, huh?"

Di flopped down in the desk chair and nodded. "Pretty much, yeah. We've got another..." she glanced up at the clock and winced, "three and a half hours of this. Hopefully we get a lot more people in, huh?" As Sandy hopped up on the desk, Di yanked open one of the desk drawers and rooted around inside. "There used to be a deck of cards here, and sometimes I'd play Fish with whoever I was working with, but I think Mr. Lawson found them and took them away."

"Why?"

"Oh, that might have been a little too much fun," Di replied, closing the drawer and grinning up and Sandy. "We'll figure something out. What are you doing tonight after this? Do you want to come see another movie?"

Sandy, who had been reaching into rooms and turning the light on before entering ever since seeing the Amityville Horror a few weeks before, was not especially excited to go see another scary movie. She was glad to have already made plans to go for a run. "Jenny has to go to the school to do some stuff tonight, and so I'm going with her and running at the track for a little while. Do you wanna come do that instead?"

Di scoffed. "Don't be ridiculous. Isn't it boring out there all by yourself? I wanted to do distance running in high school because I wanted legs like yours," she said, pointing. "But whenever I got out there I would always want to go do something else, and so I would, because running is terrible."

Sandy laughed. "It's not so bad once you get used to it. I've been there a few times since I moved and the first time I had to stop every few minutes because I couldn't figure out why I was still running. But now I just shut my mind off and go, like in high school."

"If you say so," Di said, shaking her head. "Is there ever anybody else out there when you go?"

"Nope," Sandy said. "Which is nice. Guess nobody wants to get into shape in Minnesota."

Di swatted her with a nearby newspaper. "Yeah, they're all going to movies at night like normal people do."

Later that night, Sandy sat in the passenger seat as Jenny drove down the bumpy and untended road leading to the parking lot next to the track. The track itself was somewhat overgrown, the dirt on it punctuated by the odd patch of thick grass. "Is this really it? I never thought anyone used this thing," Jenny said.

Sandy nodded, pulling her old track shoes on and bending awkwardly in the front seat to tie them. "It's a little rough, but it works. The upside is that I'm all by myself. So, you're just going to be over there in the school?"

"Yep." Jenny jabbed her thumb in the direction of the middle school, located on the other end of the field. "Just there. I think there should be janitors in there right now, so maybe if you get done early, you can just bang on the door they'll let you in if you say you know me."

"I might just wait here until you're done," Sandy said, pulling a face.

Jenny laughed. "I shouldn't be too long. I just have to drop this stuff off in my classroom and organize a few things. I don't need to have anything set up until a few weeks before September," she said, catching Sandy about to ask. "I just like to have things out of the way so I don't have to worry about it. Otherwise I panic." She grinned. "You know a little something about that, growing up with Will."

Sandy feigned deep thought. "Hmm, maybe. I seem to remember being a part of the audience for some pretty significant breakdowns when he was in high school. I could be wrong, though. That might have been my secret, other brother."

"Oh yeah, I can't wait to meet him. Maybe he'll be the easy-going one." Jenny laughed. She noticed Sandy gazing in the direction of the track, and so she said, "okay, get going, champ. Have fun."

"Talk to you later," Sandy said, pushing the car door open and stepping out. "You have fun organizing."

Jenny grinned at her and drove off.

Once she had gone, Sandy propped her leg up on the lone bench near the track and stretched, enjoying the feeling of the warm wind on the back of her neck. She started out slowly, walking half a lap before starting to run. Although she had been there a few times and the sensation was starting to go away, Sandy felt awkward and oddly aware of her arms at the beginning of her runs. After a while, though, she allowed her mind to shut off and she felt more at ease and started to remember why she enjoyed running in the first place.

She had almost done five laps before another car pulled up. As she went around a curve on the track that provided her with a view of the parking lot, Sandy saw that it wasn't Jenny. A guy got out, wearing sweats and a t-shirt with "UMD" printed across it, and holding a pair of sneakers with a sports bottle stuffed inside one of them by their laces. He crossed through the grass from where he'd parked, heading towards the track.

Immediately Sandy felt self-conscious. The guy sat on the bench and bent to tie his shoes, and Sandy took the opportunity to study him as she passed. He definitely looked athletic. He was lean but somewhat muscular, and had the generally self-assured way of carrying himself that people who were good at sports tended to have. He had brown eyes and a strong chin, like a politician or a television personality. Suddenly he glanced up, catching her looking. Their eyes met, and he smiled at her. Sandy quickly turned her head to face front again, trying to remember how long it had been since Jenny dropped her off and wondering when she would be coming back.

A few moments later, and presumably after waiting until Sandy was a far enough distance around the track to not make it seem as if he was just chasing her, the guy hopped up from the bench, bounced on his toes a few times, and took off. He had a nice, long stride, and it became clear to Sandy, far away as she was, that he was going to pass her. As Sandy heard him coming up behind her, somewhat unexpectedly, she felt an old competitive feeling surge in her chest. All at once she was pushing herself to keep ahead of this stranger, and by the time she rounded the next corner and dared to look, he was about forty feet behind her. It was, of course, impossible for her to maintain what was essentially an all-out sprint for too long, and soon she was able to hear the guy gaining on her once again.

He passed her, taking the opportunity to turn his head just slightly and grin at her as he did. Sandy felt blood rushing in her ears and she started pushing herself again, and she was able to keep within ten feet of the guy for another lap and a half before she finally made herself stop.

Sandy walked slowly away from the track, clutching her side and trying not to wheeze too noticeably. She thought to herself that if this guy continued to show up when she came to run, she would be back in good shape sooner than she had previously predicted. After hobbling a safe distance away, she sank down in the grass and flopped over on her back, chest heaving, staring up at the evening sky. She heard someone, presumably the super athlete still out there making her look bad, call out, "you okay?" and she raised her arm and waved it by way of confirmation.

She lay there for a while, listening to the distant sounds of the guy running around the track and the wind rustling in the grass. After a while, she sat up and watched him run. It seemed like he noticed her watching, because he suddenly sped up and starting taking longer, more impressive-looking strides. Sandy felt kind of mystified by this, but continued to watch him lope around like a gazelle. He did another lap before slowing to a walk. He ambled around the track until he was near where Sandy was sitting, and headed in her direction.

A car horn honked, and they both jumped. Sandy turned and saw Jenny in the car, parked in the gravel parking lot. The guy abruptly changed directions and started walking towards the bench where had left his bottle. Sandy quickly got to her feet and made her way over to the car.

"Oh God, you're all sweaty," Jenny said as Sandy got in.

"Sorry. It's hot out there."

Jenny nodded in the direction of the guy, who was sitting on the bench, facing them, taking a long drink from his bottle. "Who's that?"

Sandy shrugged. "I don't know. I've never seen anybody here before and he just showed up tonight."

"Kinda cute, huh?"

Sandy didn't answer, and the two girls squinted at the distant figure on the bench through the diminishing daylight. He put his bottle down on the bench, raised his hand, and waggled his fingers at them. "Oh, shit. He sees us. Go go go," Sandy said. Jenny threw the car in reverse, turned it around and backed out of the parking lot.

Once they were on the street and headed home, Jenny said, "was I wrong?"

"About what?"

"That guy. He was pretty cute, wasn't he?"

"I guess so." Sandy shrugged. "He was mostly just a lot better than me at running."

Jenny laughed. "Did you talk to him? I think it would be good for you to meet a nice guy here. Will thinks so, too."

Sandy scoffed. "Will thinks that? I thought he got the whole scoop from my parents, and I'm pretty sure they'd sooner I become a nun."

"Well, that's not entirely true. He thinks you're more grown-up than your parents do, and so I think it was a good idea for you to come out here. It'll be good for everybody. Plus it'll be nice to have another girl around." She grinned over at Sandy. "Now, answer my question. Did you talk to that guy?"

"No," Sandy said. "I think he was coming over to talk to me before you showed up, though."

Jenny let out a little hooting sound. "I guess I should have waited." She suddenly glanced over at Sandy with an odd expression on her face.

"What?" Sandy said, startled.

"Do you want ice cream? Or something? Do we have to go home straight away?"

Sandy shook her head. "We can get ice cream. What's going on?"

Jenny gulped. "I gotta tell you something. It's nothing bad," she said, noticing the worried look on Sandy's face. "I just have to tell somebody or I'll lose my mind."

Jenny drove them around until she found an ice cream truck and parked down the street from it. Sandy ordered a chocolate cone and Jenny got, speaking quietly and somewhat embarrassedly, "the same what she has, but bigger, if you can." Afterwards, they sat down on the curb next to the car.

Several moments of silence passed before Sandy said, "so...?"

"Oh." Jenny licked at a river of melting chocolate ice cream streaming off of her large cone. "So, I don't know if you've noticed or not, but I've been feeling pretty off lately and I think it's affected the way I act around you and Will." She paused, looking over at Sandy, who shrugged. "Right. Obviously, there's a reason for that, and..." she took a deep breath. "It's that I'm pregnant."

Sandy suddenly felt like an idiot. Of course that was why. "That's great," she said, and then paused, considering. "Wait, is it great?"

Jenny looked surprised by the question and then laughed. "It is. It's perfect. I'm just... I'm worried about how Will's gonna react."

"Why?" Sandy asked, but she knew exactly why. Will had never seemed like the paternal type, but he'd been crazy about Jenny since they were teenagers. Having kids was the logical next step, but Sandy knew as well as anyone that it wasn't everyone's ultimate goal.

"It's... well, it's complicated." Jenny sighed. "We've talked about having kids, but that was in the future. He's so busy with school and I'm just getting to a place at work where I feel like all the other teachers are starting to respect me a little bit. Technically it's not a great time, but..." she breathed in deeply and grinned over at Sandy. "I'm honestly really excited."

Sandy let out the breath she had been holding in as Jenny finished speaking. She bit off a piece of her cone and chewed thoughtfully. "When are you due? When do you think you'll tell Will?"

"March," Jenny said. "And I don't know. I didn't think I'd be able to keep it a secret for as long as I have, but for someone who's going to be a doctor, you know, he's not that perceptive." They both laughed, and then Jenny sighed again and quietly attacked her ice cream cone. "I'm glad I finally told somebody. I mean, my mom knows, but she's not—she's not here, you know?"

"Right." Sandy considered, with a small twinge of guilt, the fact that Jenny was alone out in Minnesota, too. Her family was all in Everett, and as far as Sandy knew, she rarely saw them. "I'm really happy for you, Jenny. This is gonna be great for you and Will. You shouldn't be afraid to tell him. He loves you so much. He'd be nuts to not be ready to start a family with you."

Jenny put her head down abruptly, nearly smushing her forehead into her ice cream. "That's... that's really nice," she said, her voice choked.

When they got home about a half an hour later, Will was sitting at the kitchen table, absently scratching his chin with the inked end of a pen, poring over a folder of papers. He got to his feet when they came in, moving across the room to peck Jenny on the cheek. "How was the school?"

"Do you know that you have pen all over your face?" Sandy asked. Jenny laughed, and Will licked his finger and rubbed it on his chin, inspecting the resulting smear of ink with alarm.

"Oh, hell," he said, running into the kitchen, and they heard the tap running a moment later.

Jenny caught Sandy's eyes and jerked her head in the direction of the hallway. Understanding, Sandy made herself scarce. She disappeared into the bathroom, turning the shower on and climbing in as she heard, distantly, the sound of Jenny asking Will to sit down and talk.

Sandy made a conscious effort to clean her ears well in an attempt to block out any residual sound that wasn't drowned out by the shower. As she climbed out and toweled off, she could still hear the low murmur of their voices coming from the kitchen. Suddenly Will's rose sharply, followed by a loud, high pitched laugh that Sandy had never heard from him before. "Are you serious?" his voice rang out, loud and clear. "I can't—Jay, I'm so—I love you. Jesus, really, I'm so sorry I didn't..." he voice lowered once again to a murmur and Sandy grinned, rubbing a towel vigourously over her wet hair.

A few moments later, hearing the that voices had died down, Sandy stuck her head out of the bathroom, cautiously checking if she could creep back across the hallway to her bedroom. Will and Jenny were standing in the hallway, and Sandy jumped. "Jesus, guys," she said.

Will had a dazedly happy expression on his face. "We have something to tell you, Sandy," he said. "It's big."

"Is it okay if I put some clothes on?" Sandy asked.

He shook his head. "No."

Jenny elbowed him and he looked down at her like this was the most romantic gesture in the world. "Let her get dressed. Don't be a maniac."

Sandy was eventually allowed to get dressed, and once she was, she joined Will and Jenny in the living room, sinking down in an armchair across from them on the couch. She assumed by the look on Will's face that he thought he was the first person in the house to hear the good news, and so she prepared herself to look surprised.

Will folded his hands in his lap, looked over at Jenny, and grinned. "We have some very exciting news," he said, reminding Sandy, somewhat uncomfortably, of her father. "There's going to be another member of this household soon."

Sandy blinked, and, knowing what the news actually was, thought that this was an odd way of revealing it. "Are you having someone move in to the other bedroom?" she asked, and Jenny looked like she was about to laugh.

"Nope," Will said, shaking his head. He put his hand on Jenny's shoulder. "We're having a baby."

"A baby?" Sandy said, widening her eyes and putting a hand to her cheek. "You guys! That's great!" She stood up and wrapped Will in a hug, thinking his not being able to see her face would be an advantage. Over Will's shoulder, Jenny flashed Sandy a thumbs up.

Will clapped his hands together. "Let's have a drink to celebrate. Well," he said, shaking his head at Jenny. "Not you, obviously. I think I have a bottle of champagne somewhere in the house—let's have some, Sandy."

Jenny frowned. "Why do you have champagne? Nobody ever told me you were so fancy."

Will flapped a hand at her and went off to find it. Jenny turned to Sandy once he was gone and grinned. "Thanks for pretending," she said. "He asked if you knew and he seemed so excited to get to see your reaction."

As Sandy sipped Will's mysterious champagne and listened to he and Jenny excitedly talk about plans for the baby, she felt giddily excited for them. Considering how indifferent she had felt about the two of them before moving in, this felt like a step towards having a real relationship with the only family Sandy could have a relationship with. She was oddly thrilled to feel at home somewhere again, and her prior worries, momentarily at least, faded into the background. She didn't think about Ray, or creepy Mr. Lawson, or being in an unfamiliar state. She certainly didn't think about the super-athlete from the track.

Meanwhile, in an apartment complex somewhere else in Burnsville, John "Bah" Harrington clattered into the apartment he shared with Mark Pavelich and Mark Wells and tossed his water bottle into the sink. Phil Verchota and Buzz Schneider were there as well, nursing beer on the couch with the Marks and solemnly watching the news. "Whatcha been doin', Bah?" Phil called as Bah rooted in the fridge for a beer of his own.

He twisted the top off and stood next to the couch. "I was just down at the track for a while. You guys just been sitting around drinking my beer?"

"Our beer," Pav corrected.

"Ours, fine," Bah agreed.

Phil stood up and stretched. "We thought we were gonna go see a band downtown, but Buzzy got the nights wrong, so that's what we're doing tomorrow night instead." He grinned over at Buzz, who threw his hands up helplessly.

"I can hardly keep track of what day it is. I'm so tired." He yawned, as if to prove this.

"Yeah, yeah, tell me something I don't know," Phil said. "How is it that you're able to go running on top of everything else that we're doing, Bah? Is that not maybe an indication that you're not working hard enough for Herbie?"

Bah rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I'm thinking that's probably it."

"Isn't it kinda sad to be out there all by yourself?"

"I wasn't by myself tonight," Bah said. "There was a girl there tonight."

Phil raised his eyebrows and exchanged a look with Buzz. "That so? Were you able to beat her out there? Was she cute?"

Bah grinned and answered both questions at once. "Yeah."


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4 -** **August 21 - 25, 1979**

It wasn't really a two person job, but they made it into one. Sandy stood on top of a short ladder, restocking cans of diced tomatoes, while Di stood below on the ground, handing her the cans from the box.

"So have you been back to the U lately?" Sandy asked.

Di shrugged. "The last time I was there some guy's girlfriend chewed me out and told me that everyone knew what I was up to, so I'm staying away for a little while." She grinned up at Sandy. "I guess it's hard to make your own spontaneous meeting with a gorgeous future surgeon."

Sandy laughed. "You decided that he's going to be a surgeon?"

"Maybe." Di handed Sandy another can and leaned against the shelves behind her. "Somebody who saves lives with his bare hands is probably really gentle in bed, right? Careful!" She reached out and steadied the ladder as Sandy burst out laughing.

"You'll have to test that out and let me know," Sandy told her.

Di laughed and started to answer, but suddenly craned her neck and peered around the aisle, a grin spreading across her face. "Three good-looking guys just came in," she told Sandy, who was looking down at her inquisitively. "Take a look."

Sandy peered over the top of the shelf and immediately ducked back down. The super-athlete from the track a few days prior was standing there, watching the two guys he had come in with as they argued about something. She teetered and nearly tipped the ladder again, but Di held it still. "I've seen one of them before," Sandy whispered. "He was there when I was running at the middle school the other night."

Di folded her arms and rolled her eyes. "Apparently I have to start getting in shape." She squished Sandy against the shelves in her haste to join her on top of the ladder and poked her head above the rows of canned soup. Sandy chanced another peek, too. "Which one is it?"

"The one in the green shirt." It was definitely the nameless runner, looking tired and trying to hurry his friends into the store. The two other guys, one with long-ish blond hair and the other much taller with thick rimmed glasses, were still talking heatedly with each other as the runner shepherded them away from the door. Then he looked up and his eyes fell directly on Sandy and Di. Sandy gasped and quickly ducked, Di following suit a second later, but he had obviously seen them.

He came around the corner and into the aisle, followed by his friends. "Hey, I thought that was you," he said, pointing up at Sandy.

"Yeah," Sandy said, feeling like an idiot.

He came to a stop in front of the ladder. "Do you work here?"

Sandy nodded. "Yeah," she said again, reaching down and holding up a can of the tomatoes. Beside her, Di giggled quietly. Sandy elbowed her and nearly knocked her off the ladder.

The guy smiled. "Kinda funny to run into you again. What's your name? I never got a chance to ask the other night"

"Oh," Sandy said. "I'm Sandy."

"Sandy. Good," he said. He reached up and held out a hand for her to shake. "I'm John."

One of the other guys piped up suddenly as they shook hands. "His name is actually Bah," he said. "John is just the name he uses when he's trying to be _sophisticated_ for the ladies."

John or Bah whipped around. "Hey, why don't you go get our groceries, huh? I thought we had a lot of stuff to pick up."

Di scrambled down the ladder. "I'll come help you!" She ushered the two guys out of the aisle, leaving Sandy and John/Bah alone.

Once they had gone, the two of them stood in awkward silence. "They didn't actually have to leave," he said.

Sandy came down off the ladder. "Sorry. What was your _actual_ name?"

He shrugged. "Both, technically. Nobody who really knows me ever calls me John, but I've just found that it's odd to introduce yourself as Bah to strangers. You can call me whichever you want."

"Bah," Sandy said, nodding. "I like it. Like a sheep?"

Bah laughed. "Like a two-year old trying to pronounce the word 'baby,'" he said. "I wasn't doing anything interesting enough when they gave it to me to generate a better nickname. You know, I was worried that I wouldn't see you again at the track and I wouldn't get your name."

"Why?"

"Because when you meet a cute, athletic girl, you try to get her name sometimes. Right?" He grinned at Sandy as she ducked her head slightly, trying to hide her suddenly red cheeks. "I guess it's good that Strobel and O'Cee needed me to drive them here so I could run into you again, huh?"

Sandy nodded. "I guess so." And then, because she could almost hear Di's voice in the back of her head hollering at her to find out more information about this guy, she asked, "so do you go to the U?"

He shook his head. "No, I finished college last year. I actually moved here to play hockey."

"Oh. For the... North Stars?" Sandy took a second to remember the name of the NHL team and impressed herself by being able to recall it.

"Nope. I'm actually on the team that's going to the Olympics in February. Our coach is from the area and so we all moved here."

"Oh... Wow!" Sandy said. "That's really impressive. So you're—I mean, you're some kind of... you're a superstar?"

Bah laughed. "I'm okay with letting you think that if you want. Do you like hockey?"

Sandy shook her head and regretted it a second later. This was clearly a guy who took his hockey seriously. She didn't want to offend him by saying she didn't like it. "I mean, it's fine. I didn't grow up here so I'm not as into it as some people might be. It's not my favourite or anything. I don't _not_ like it—"

"It's okay if you don't," Bah said, cutting her off. "It's not for everyone, I get it. Where are you from?"

"Washington. Everett. I moved in with my brother this summer."

"Oh, so you're at the U?"

"No," Sandy said. "I'm..." She sighed and gestured around herself, struck with how underwhelming her life in Minnesota was. "I'm working here until I figure it out."

He nodded. "Nice. And the track? It clearly wasn't your first time out there."

Sandy could hear, faintly, the sound of Di and the other two guys laughing in some distant corner of the store. She smiled at Bah. "It wasn't. I was on the track team in my high school, but I'm out of practice now. Were you, too, or are you just...?"

"Generally very athletic, yeah," Bah said, grinning. "You didn't want to take it further than high school?"

Sandy shrugged. "I wasn't good enough at it. It was just fun." She raised her eyebrows at him. "Do you ever just do things for fun?"

"Oh, come on," he said. "I saw you sprinting your ass off trying to catch up with me. You weren't having fun."

Sandy started to respond, but the two other guys came around the corner pushing a cart, followed closely by Di, her hair sticking out about a half a foot on either side from her messing it up. "We got everything we needed," the one with the black-rimmed glasses said. "How 'bout you, Bah, you get a number?"

Bah cast his friend a look. "Not quite. We were talking about running."

"Well, that's boring," the guy said. "Right?" He nudged Di with his elbow, and she giggled. "I invited Di here to our little get together this weekend before we go to Europe."

"You're going to Europe?" Sandy asked, and Bah nodded.

"We've all been practicing together for about a month and at the beginning of September we're going over there to play a bunch of teams."

"They're hockey players!" Di piped up, her voice oddly high pitched.

"Yep," said the blond guy. "We are."

"I told her," Bah said. "That's a good idea, though, O'Cee." He turned to Sandy. "Do you want to come? We're leaving on the 31st, so it'll be this Saturday."

"It's invite only," the guy named O'Cee said. "We wanna keep it quiet so we don't get a hundred and fifty people showing up at our place." He grinned over at Di. "Don't take that to mean you're not allowed to bring any little friends you might have hiding around in here."

At that moment, Sandy remembered something Di had told her the day they had met, a story about how her sister had met hockey players at a bar. It hadn't been _these_ hockey players, but she wondered if they were the same type of guys. She didn't have much time to think about this, because Bah and his friends were starting to leave.

"Oh—can I get your number?" Bah asked the question like it was an off-the-cuff, throwaway request, and his two teammates laughed behind him from the end of the aisle. "What? She's going to need directions to our place and... and everything," he said, gesturing around with his hands. "Whatever. Do you have a pen?"

There was a pen and clipboard on the ladder for marking off inventory information, but no spare paper. "Here—" Di said. She tore off one of the flaps off the box of tomatoes and handed it to him. "Write yours on half and she'll write hers on the other."

"We're never going to be able to close that box anymore," Sandy told her friend as Bah scribbled on the chunk of cardboard.

" _You're not letting him leave without getting his phone number, Sandy_ ," Di hissed.

When the phone numbers had been exchanged, O'Cee clapped his hands together. "What a productive day," he said. "Can I assume we'll see you ladies soon?"

"Yes!" Di said, her eyes gleaming like she was fifteen years old and addressing Shaun Cassidy.

The boys left, and Di waited until they were out of the store to let out a squeal of joy. "This is so great!" She grabbed Sandy's hands and pumped them up and down in a little dance. "We're going to a party with some Olympic athletes and you're going to _marry that guy_!"

"Oh, wow," Sandy said. "Did I miss the part where he asked me to marry him?"

Di rolled her eyes. "He _remembered_ you from the track. That's significant, Sandy. He was the one to ask for your number. These are all good signs. I'm so excited for you!" She waved Sandy's arms around some more, and Sandy laughed, caught up in her friend's enthusiasm.

When Sandy opened the door for Di on the night of the party, she could see that her friend was in something of a state. "Aren't you _excited_?" she squeaked, bouncing from one foot to the other as Sandy wriggled her feet into her shoes.

"It's a party," Sandy said. "We've been to parties before."

Di shook her head so hard her hair whipped around. "This isn't a high school booze and young boys thing, Sandy. These are _men_. It's different."

Sandy wanted to ask how, exactly, Di knew this, but decided against it. The two girls left the house and started walking in the direction of the address Bah had given her on the phone the day before. "It's so convenient that Bah lives just nearby. I think it's meant to be," Di said.

"Do you?" Sandy laughed a little. "He doesn't live here all the time, you know. They'll leave when the Olympics are over."

"That's what I mean! Of all the apartment complexes in all the neighborhoods in the whole Twin Cities area, and _this_ is the one that has enough space in it for all these boys?" Di let out a dreamy sigh. "It's like a movie or something. It is!" she said, seeing Sandy shaking her head. "You'll see. You'll have a lot of fun tonight and you'll stop being such a downer because you'll see that you're living in a movie."

"What about you? Maybe it's _you_ living in a movie. Didn't you like the guys who were in the store?"

Di screwed up one side of her mouth and hummed. "They were both very cute and very nice, but I don't know if they liked me. Besides, I don't want to be with an athlete."

"But these ones are obviously good enough to play in the Olympics," Sandy said. "I thought you said the problem was that you couldn't tell if they were good enough to do anything."

"That's right, but you always have to be careful around hockey players. You didn't grow up here so you don't really know how it goes."

Sandy stared at her. "How does it go?"

Di made a non-committal sound. "You'll probably see it tonight. I think it's the case for any group of people who are good at anything, but since we have a lot of hockey players and people who like hockey here, it seems like it's a bigger deal in Minnesota. Probably in Boston, too, but don't quote me on that. They're just... very aware of how much people like them. And they use it to their advantage."

"They use it to their advantage? In what? Street fights?"

"I'm serious! I know a lot of girls who were treated badly by hockey players because they felt like they were entitled to it. You'll see."

Sandy couldn't help but laugh. "I thought I was going to marry Bah. Now it sounds like you hate everybody who plays the sport he plays. I'm getting very mixed signals from you."

Di shook her head and raised a finger at Sandy dramatically. "You. Will. See. Just be careful."

Given this fairly ominous warning, Sandy expected to round the corner on the block where the apartment complex was and see a traffic jam and a lineup down the street of people waiting to get in and hold court with the hockey team. The reality was a nearly deserted street and Sandy's slow-dawning realization that she didn't know which apartment the party was in. Bah hadn't mentioned it. She stopped walking, considering this, and Di turned to look at her. "What's going on?"

"I don't really know where we're supposed to go when we get inside. He never told me an apartment number or anything."

Di, ever resourceful and apparently forgetting her suspicions surrounding hockey players, spotted a guy getting out of a car and carrying three pizza boxes across the street. "Hey!" she shouted, startling him. Di took off running, and Sandy reluctantly followed.

"Yeah?" He was very tall, but he looked a little younger than Bah or the guys who had been in the store with him.

"Are you on the hockey team?" Di asked. The guy nodded, looking confused. "Oh, great. I'm Di, and this is Sandy. What's your name?"

"Mike," he said.

"Great," Di said again. "Look, Mike, we're friends of Bah's, and he invited us tonight but he didn't tell us where everyone was meeting up. Do you think you could take us in?"

Mike surveyed them, looking suspicious, even doubtful, but he eventually seemed resigned to the fact that Di would probably follow him inside if he didn't willingly take them. "Sure," he said at last. "I left my beer in the back of my car—can one of you just grab it so I don't have to take another trip?"

"Of course," Di said. "Sandy, quick—go get it."

Precariously juggling the pizza boxes, he handed Sandy his car keys. When she returned a moment later with a case of beer, he and Di were chatting. "... and isn't it just _too much_ of a coincidence that he came into the exact store where she works on a day when she has a shift?"

Mike smirked at Sandy over the top of Di's head. "Yeah, that's wild."

Sandy bumped into Di's back with the case of beer. "Stop."

"I was just getting a character reference," Di said, dancing away from her. "Anyway, friends, shall we?" She walked in between them as they approached the building, nearly vibrating with excitement.

Mike pressed a button on the intercom near the door and they waited in silence. Sandy noticed that there were no names listed on quite a few of the apartments on the directory and wondered if those were where all the hockey players lived. Finally, there was a crackle and they heard someone say, "yeah?"

"It's Rammer," Mike said. "I brought your damn pizza and I also have Bah's..." he gave them another once-over before finishing, "friends, I guess."

Di craned her neck so her face was in front of the intercom. "It's Di and Sandy," she nearly shouted.

"Yeah, man. Di and Sandy are also here," Mike said. "Do you wanna buzz us up, or...?"

"You bet," the guy on the other end said. "Come on up." His sentence was punctuated by a loud buzz and the sound of the door unlocking. Mike reached around them and, hefting the boxes over to one of his arms, held the door open.

Sandy and Di followed Mike up a flight of stairs and down a hallway where they were able to hear the distant sounds of music playing. He knocked on an apartment door and, a moment later, the door was flung open, revealing someone who was presumably another hockey player. "Hey, Rammer. What did you bring?" The guy grinned at the girls.

"The usual, pizza and some girls," Mike told him. "Can you let us come in? She's been carrying that case this whole time." He gestured with his head at Sandy, who was trying to hide the fact that she was balancing the case of beer on her knee to give her fingers a rest.

The guy moved aside for them to come in. "Here, darlin', can I take that from you?" He helpfully took the beer from Sandy as she passed him.

"Thanks," Sandy said. She looked around, noticing that there weren't as many people there as Bah and his friends had made it sound like there would be. She turned to Di to mention this to her. In the few seconds it had taken Sandy to look around the room, Di had opened one of Mike's beer and was talking to the guy who had let them in. She looked busy. Sandy craned her neck, trying to see Bah, and noticed him sitting on a couch with a couple of other people. He glanced her way, noticed her standing there, and sprang to his feet.

"Sandy—hi!" he said, making his way across the apartment. "I wasn't sure you were gonna come. Were you able to find the place okay?"

Sandy nodded and gestured at Mike. "We had to get him to show us where everybody was, but other than that it was fine. How are you?"

He grinned. "I'm great. Here—come sit," he said, leading her back to the couch where he'd been sitting before. Sandy glanced over her shoulder at Di, who was, at that moment, throwing her head back and laughing at something the guy had just said. Bah waved his hands to make a guy sitting in the middle of the couch scoot down and sat. "I'll introduce you to everybody," he said, patting the cushion beside him.

The small living room was equipped with a couch and two armchairs gathered around a television, although no one really looked like they were paying attention to the baseball game that was playing. There were three more guys and one other girl sitting there who had all turned to Bah and were waiting to be introduced. "Everybody, this is Sandy," he said, gesturing at Sandy, who waved. "Sandy, this is Phil Verchota," he said, pointing at the guy sitting on his other side on the couch, "Buzz Schneider and his wife Gayle, Bill Baker, and you remember O'Cee from the store, right?"

Sandy nodded. "Nice to meet all of you."

"So you're the girl from the track?" Phil Verchota asked. "We finally get to meet you after having to hear from Bah about how there's someone out there running circles around him."

Bah made a skeptical sound. "I'm pretty sure that's not what I told you."

"Yeah, well, I'm not about to repeat the story you told the whole team about how you were able to beat a girl you'd never met in a foot race."

"I didn't really tell them that," Bah told Sandy, turning to look at her apologetically.

"Yeah, so how do we know that's what happened?" Jack piped up, and Bah, unable to form a response, threw one of the couch pillows at his teammate.

For a while, Sandy sat and listened to the boys talk, unable to contribute anything to a conversation that was mostly about hockey and their mysterious coach, Herb. After a while, Gayle Schneider stood and caught Sandy's eye. "Want a drink?" she mouthed. Sandy nodded gratefully and followed the other girl into the kitchen.

"Sorry about them," Gayle said, digging in the fridge. "Sometimes they get wrapped up in their own little world and forget that not everybody's life revolves around hockey." She poured a glass of Coke with a generous splash of rye and handed it to Sandy. "You'll get used to it after a while."

"Thanks," Sandy said, taking the glass and leaning against the counter. "I never really expected to feel like an idiot listening to people talk about sports."

Gayle laughed and set to work pouring herself a drink. "There's a science to it, definitely. Me and Buzz have been together since high school so I'm used to it by now, but there are still times when I just want to scream at them to talk about movies or TV or politics or _anything_ else."

"Since high school? So that's... how many years?"

"Seven," Gayle said. She shook her head. "Man, we're getting old, huh?"

Sandy laughed. "That's great, though. And has he been serious about hockey for that whole time?"

"He has," Gayle said. "We've been moving all over the place for the different teams he's been on since the last Olympics." She held up a hand and started counting them off: "Springfield, Birmingham, Oklahoma City—we didn't stay there long enough to even find a place to rent, then Hampton for the rest of that year, and then we were in Milwaukee for a couple of years, and now we're here. We're a travelling band, Buzzy and I."

"Wow," Sandy said. "And you don't mind moving around that much?"

Gayle thought about it for a moment. "Well, not really. I mean, we get to see all different parts of the country. All over the world, really. Buzzy says we've gotten to meet just about everybody in hockey over the past couple of years, and sometimes I feel like that's not a joke. Anyway, I can find work just about anywhere, so it's not an issue for me. But there's apparently only a few places that want Buzz to come play hockey, so it's down to him most of the time." She shrugged. "We make it work."

The idea of that seemed unfair to Sandy. She wasn't sure she'd be happy with having that little choice, and, failing to find a way to express this without sounding judgmental, Sandy said nothing, deciding instead to look around the room for Di. She found her chatting animatedly to two guys near the window. Di winked and grinned at Sandy, and then jerked her head in the direction of Bah, who was still sitting on the couch and talking with his friends.

Having noticed her looking over at Bah, Gayle slid along the kitchen counter and nudged Sandy with her shoulder. "So what's the story with you and Bah?"

"It's—" Sandy was suddenly struck by how little there was, in terms of substance, to "the story with her and Bah." She shook her head. "We really only talked the once, when he came into the store where I work. Now that I think about it, it's kind of amazing that he invited us at all. My friend and I," she said, pointing over at Di when Gayle looked confused. "She came with me, but she's mingling."

"Smart girl," Gayle grinned. "I hope you don't think I'm nosy or anything for asking. Buzz was telling me last night how he was surprised that Bah all the sudden was talking about how he invited a 'nice girl' to the party." She lowered her voice as she spoke to mimic the boys', and they both laughed. "He doesn't usually have much to do with girls during hockey season, so it was just interesting to us. He's not, you know, boring or anything like that," she added, catching something in Sandy's expression that she hadn't been projecting. "He's just really dedicated."

Sandy took a sip of her drink, considering this. "Have you known Bah for a long time?"

Gayle shook her head and shrugged. "We're a little older than him, but we all grew up in the same area, on the Range. Kind of in the north part of the state," she clarified. "So they've—Buzzy and Bah and the other guy from the area, Pav—been playing against each other for basically their whole lives." She shrugged again. "I wouldn't say I know him well, but I've known _of_ him since high school. It's kind of the way it goes in small towns like where we're from. You're not from Minnesota, right?"

Sandy shook her head. "Washington—Everett."

"I figured," Gayle said, and a second later she giggled and said, "sorry, that sounded snotty. Anyway, long story short, we've known him for a while."

"Is he a good guy?" Sandy hadn't meant to ask the question so bluntly, but she felt like the conversation was headed in that direction anyway.

"He's a _great_ guy." Gayle nodded in agreement with herself. "I always wondered why he never has a girlfriend, because, I mean," she gestured over at Bah, "he's a good-looking guy, right?"

Sandy nodded. "I think so."

"Right. And he's not a total bore to talk to like some hockey players can be. Buzz says he's smart. So we never understood why he was always single. When you figure out what his problem is, you should really let us know."

"I'll keep that in mind," Sandy said, laughing. "So in all the time you guys have known him, he's never had a girlfriend?"

Gayle shook her head. "I guess I exaggerated. Keep in mind that we're not keeping tabs on Bah all the time, but I've only ever seen him with..." She took a sip of her drink, thinking about it. "Two girls? Two girls—two separate times, I mean—who I was sure were his girlfriends. There could have been more, and maybe Buzz knows more about this than I do. Should I ask him?"

Sandy shook her head, mortified. "No, don't ask him anything. He'd tell Bah."

"He wouldn't if I told him not to," Gayle said. "He knows better than that by now." She grinned over at Sandy. "I'll keep an ear out for anything about you that comes up and let you know."

"Thanks," Sandy said, not sure if she even wanted this service.

Across the room, Bah seemed to notice how long Sandy had been gone. He looked around, spotted where she and Gayle were, and came over. "What are we gossiping about?" he asked, reaching around Gayle to grab another beer.

"We were just talking about you," Gayle told him.

Bah raised his eyebrows. "Is that so? Hopefully nothing too bad."

Gayle mimed zipping her lips closed, waved, and walked away to rejoin Buzz and the rest of the people around the television.

"Well, okay," Bah said. He turned back to Sandy and leaned next to her against the counter. "How about you? Feel like talking?"

"She said some really awful things about you," Sandy said.

He rested his head against the cupboards behind them and let out an exaggerated sigh. "You're killing me, Gayle Schneider," he said loudly. The people by the television giggled like little children. Bah grinned over at her. "Are you having a good time tonight?"

Sandy nodded. "It's nice that you can all hang out like this. Does everybody on the team live here in this building?"

Bah sipped his beer. "Nah. There's a few guys from around the city who are just living in their own places, and a couple of other guys kind of spread out around. And then Jimmy lives in the team doctor's basement."

"Who's Jimmy?"

"He's one of our goalies," Bah said. "It's so he doesn't have to pay a bunch of rent since we're not really making a lot of money, but we don't see much of him." He gestured around the room as if to indicate that Jimmy was not there, but, having never seen him before in her life, Sandy could not confirm this. She wondered if Bah was a little drunk. "Anyway, some of us figured it would be a good idea to try and find a place where we could all stay together."

On the other side of the room, Sandy saw Di, her court narrowed down to just one guy now, deep in conversation. Bah followed her eyes.

" _Somebody's_ having a good time," he said.

Hearing the inflection in his voice, Sandy looked over at him. "So am _I_ ," she said.

He elbowed her gently. "I'm just bugging you. I know it's hard to come somewhere where you don't know anybody and just gel. It did look like you were getting along with Gayle, though."

"She's nice." Sandy swirled the remaining liquid around in her cup and downed it. "I asked her about you, you know."

He was leaning very close suddenly, his eyes locked on hers, and Sandy knew that Bah wanted her to kiss him. The idea of it seemed ludicrous. They'd just met, officially, earlier that week. "Yeah?" Bah said, grinning. "What'd you want to know? You know you can just ask, right?"

Sandy smiled, hovering on the edge of enjoying this flirtation. "It's just girl talk. Nothing you need to concern yourself with."

Bah leaned back a little bit to take a drink of his beer and laughed. "Whatever you say, kiddo."

It was an innocuous and playful term of endearment, but unfortunately for Bah, it had been Ray's favourite one for Sandy. It had been the last word she'd heard him say before she left him standing on his front lawn in Everett just a month before. Sandy felt her skin react to hearing it, and then felt a few other things. She was suddenly ashamed to be there, moments away from kissing this stranger who had done nothing but be good-looking and better than her at running. This lead into feeling guilty. The final thing Sandy felt was annoyance. She had every right to go out and kiss every good-looking runner in the country. In the world. She no longer had a boyfriend. She could do whatever the hell she wanted.

This cavalcade of emotions must have been playing out on Sandy's face, because Bah straightened up and gave her a concerned look. "Whoa, what happened just now?"

Sandy set her empty glass down on the counter. When Bah made a move to refill it, she shook her head. "I just—you know, I'm sorry, I just started feeling really sick."

"Oh," Bah said. He reached again for her glass, this time turning the tap on to fill it with water. "Here, drink some water. Maybe you just drank that one too fast. Did Gayle pour too much into it?"

She shook her head again. "No, I think I'd better just go get some air. Actually, I think I should just go home."

He looked alarmed at how quickly things had changed. "Are you sure? Do you maybe just want to go stand outside for a bit? I can come with you—"

"No, no. It's okay. Really, I'll be fine. Look, I'll call you, okay? I have your number." She was backing away from him, prickling with embarrassment as he watched her, wide eyed and holding the glass of water in one hand and a beer in the other.

Sandy had nearly reached the door before she remembered Di. She turned, and, finding her friend still standing near the window, she went over to her. Di beamed at Sandy, but her smile faltered when she saw the look on Sandy's face. "What happened?"

"I gotta get out of here," Sandy said, hearing how dramatic that sounded but not caring.

Di gave the guy she had been talking to a passing glance and nodded, barely missing a beat. "Let's go," she said.

Once they were outside, Di let Sandy walk about a block away from the apartment complex before grabbing her by the elbow and making her sit down on the curb. Sandy rested her forehead on her knee and took in a shuddering breath of cool night air. Di drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. They were silent for about a minute, listening to the sounds of the night around them. Then, Di said, "do you want to talk about it?"

Sandy raised her head and felt, to her surprise, tracks of tears running down her cheeks. She wiped them away, annoyed to be crying. "You didn't have to leave with me, you know. It looked like you were having a good time."

Di batted the idea away with a wave of her hand. "Don't be ridiculous. What kind of friend would I be if I stayed? I came with you. I just left you alone because I figured you'd want to talk to Bah. Did he—did he say or do something?"

"Oh." Having been feeling a rush of happiness at hearing Di refer to herself as her friend, Sandy was suddenly brought back to reality by this question. She hadn't considered how it must have looked for her to leave the party the way she did. "Oh, shit. No, he didn't do anything. He was just being nice. It was all my fault. I was—" she paused, considering how to explain this to Di and realizing that she'd have to tell her the whole story. "Do you want to know why I moved here?"

She told Di everything, from the summer she graduated from high school to what had happened while she was talking to Bah. It was an oddly cathartic feeling, hearing herself tell this long story to someone who had no involvement in it. She talked about things that only her family and Ray knew. When she finished speaking, Di let out a low whistle. "Oh my God, Sandy. I _knew_ there had to be something more to your coming here than just wanting to live somewhere else, but I didn't think—wow. I'm sorry all of that happened to you."

Sandy shrugged. "It's in the past." She could barely finish the sentence. Based on the fact that she almost left a Looney Tunes-style, Sandy-shaped hole in the wall of Bah's apartment complex, it stood to reason that her life in Everett was decidedly _not_ in the past. She sighed. "Well, maybe that's not entirely true."

"Do you think?" Di giggled, and then her face became serious. "You know, it's okay to not be ready to move on. You're allowed to take all the time you want. Nobody would judge you for that."

"I know." Sandy rubbed her cheeks. "I know. There's just a big part of me that wants to be done with all of it, and I think it's just because I'm worried that the longer I'm hung up on all of this, the more likely it'll be that I go back or decide that this wasn't the right thing to do." She unfolded her legs, laying them out on the road. "Your early twenties aren't supposed to be this hard."

"Well, they're not for most of us," Di said. "I don't know what it's worth, but I think that as long as you feel like you made the right decision, you're exactly where you need to be. If that ever changes, then you should reconsider. Until then," she shrugged, "I think you should just have fun with me and take your time trying to get past what happened back there." She put her arm around Sandy's shoulders. "I'm glad you're here."

Sandy rested her cheek against Di's arm. "Me too."

Later, when she came back inside the house from seeing Di off, Sandy heard the phone ringing. Will and Jenny were still out, and, thinking that whoever it was must be calling for them, she let it ring. It rang again five minutes later while Sandy was in the shower, and then again when she was drying her hair.

Wondering if it was Will or Jenny and suddenly worried if something had happened to them, Sandy ran to answer it.

It was Bah. "I just wanted to see if you got home okay," he said.

"Oh." Sandy fiddled with the towel she had used to wrap her hair. "Yeah, we made it back. Was that you calling all those times?"

"Yeah. I was worried about you—you just left all of the sudden."

Sandy sat down on the floor with the phone. "Right. I'm sorry about tonight, Bah. I was pretty rude."

"No, no. If you weren't feeling good, you weren't feeling good. That's not your fault."

She had a feeling that Bah didn't buy her story. "Right," she said again. "Look, about that—"

"You don't have to explain yourself," he said, cutting her off. She heard the sound of a beer fizzing near the phone receiver. "I should apologize for coming on as strong as I did. That's not usually the way I am. I hope I didn't scare you off."

Sandy sighed. She wondered for a moment if she should just explain everything to Bah, but decided against it. They had just met, after all. Comparatively, he had nothing to worry about in terms of scaring _her_ off. "No, you didn't. It's not that. You just—you said something that reminded me of somebody and I just wasn't expecting it."

"Hmm," Bah hummed. "Was this somebody, by any chance, male?"

"Yeah." Sandy rested her head against the wall and laughed. "You got me."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Sandy considered it for a moment. She had, after all, already told Di everything that night. Telling him the whole story might help make sense of the way that Sandy had acted. In the end, she thought better of it. As nice as Bah was, she barely knew him. "It's all right. It's just something that I'm working through."

"Okay," Bah said. There were a few moments of silence before he spoke again. "Well, anyway, I hope you feel better. That sudden nausea caused by nothing can be a real problem."

Sandy laughed. "It's a nightmare."

She heard, again, the sounds of Bah sipping a beer. "You know, after you left I had a hell of a time convincing Gayle that I didn't say anything disgusting to you to make you take off like you did. She thinks I'm a real pervert now."

They laughed together at this, and Sandy noted somewhere in the back of her mind that she liked the way it sounded. "She probably thinks that's the reason why you're single now. She told me tonight that she and Buzz couldn't figure it out."

Bah scoffed. "Well, I'm glad somebody's worried. Did she really say that?"

"Mm-hmm," Sandy said. "Don't tell her I said anything. I think that might have been told to me in confidence."

"I can't promise you that," he said. "I specifically told her to only say nice things about me, and this is a real betrayal. Did she say anything good at all?"

"Well," Sandy said, "she said you're a good guy and that you're too preoccupied to care about girls during hockey season, that's all."

"That guy sounds like a real asshole. You know, I've got plenty of time for girls. Maybe too much time."

The car pulled into the driveway, flooding the dark living room with light. "Good to know," Sandy said. "Look, I gotta go. My brother and sister-in-law are home."

"All right," Bah said. "I'll talk to you soon, hopefully. You know where I live now, so feel free to drop by anytime—I'm in 314 over here. Just come and ring the buzzer if you feel like talking."

Sandy used the wall to push herself into a standing position. "I might take you up on that."

They hung up as Will and Jenny came in through the side door, Jenny carrying a large bag of popcorn. "Oh," Will said. "I thought you were going out with your friend tonight."

"I did," Sandy told him. "I'm already home for the night."

"Why are you hanging out by the phone?" Jenny asked, offering Sandy some of her popcorn. "Who were you talking to? Was it a boy?"

Sandy threw a piece of popcorn at her, and Jenny ducked and caught it in her mouth.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5 - August 28 - 29, 1979**

Sandy didn't speak to Bah for four days after the night of the party, and the more time passed, the more panicky she felt. She didn't want the last time she spoke to him before he went away for a month to be an awkward phone call on the night she ran away from him at a party like a maniac.

"I'm sorry," Di said, putting her feet up on the desk in the office at the grocery store. "But did he not give you his phone number? Can't you just call him?"

Sandy folded her arms. "Well, yeah. I don't know what I'm supposed to say to him, though."

Di dug around in the desk drawer and pulled out a nail file. She worked on the edge of her thumbnail, apparently deep in thought. After a few moments, she looked up at Sandy and blinked as if she'd forgotten she was there. Di waved the file at her. "Start by telling him good luck over in Europe. Did you tell him that the last time you talked?" Sandy shook her head. "Great, so there's something to get you going. Athletes like that. They like when they think people care about their sports."

"I guess so," Sandy said. She anxiously chewed on the edge of her nail, dropping her hand from her mouth as Di waved the file at her again. "God, I forgot how stressful this all was. I've been with somebody who didn't need to be _romanced_ for too long."

"I didn't know you were planning on _romancing_ him," Di said, waggling her eyebrows at Sandy. "I know what else you can say to him if that was your intention."

Sandy laughed. "You know what I mean. I wasn't good at this when I was younger, and I'm definitely not any better at it now."

Di gave her a sympathetic look and put the nail file back into the drawer. "Look. It's not going to be as bad as you think. It never is. He's just a _person_ , and he's probably hoping that you're going to call. He let the phone ring and ring that night at your place until you picked up, so he's clearly interested."

"Or he was worried that I wandered out into the street and got hit by a car because of how I left," Sandy said.

"Or that, yes," Di said, giggling. "Either way, I think he's interested in you and I'm going to choose to believe that until he does something to make me think otherwise. He seems like a good guy, Sandy."

"You've gotten past your worries that he's just another hockey player?"

Di shrugged.. "I guess it's possible that there are hockey players who are decent guys. _I guess_. Based on the stuff you told me about him that you heard from that guy's wife, he seems okay. I can't speak for the rest of them, but Bah seems fine for the time being."

"Oh, great," Sandy said, laughing. "Are you saying you didn't get a good read on the guy you were talking to at the party? You seemed pretty warmed up to him."

Di didn't seem to know who Sandy was talking about, but she remembered a moment later. "Oh, him? That guy wasn't a hockey player, he was a friend of a friend of one. He told me which one he knew like that would make a difference in whether I was interested, but..." She gave an exaggerated shrug to indicate how little she cared. "I talked a little bit with the guy who let us into the apartment but he was leaning very heavily on the fact that he was going to the Olympics, and there are more impressive things."

Sandy raised her eyebrows. "Like what, exactly?"

"I don't know," Di said. "Like having something to say about yourself other than how you're going to the Olympics. Anyway, we're not talking about me here. Will you call?"

"Probably."

"Tonight?"

Sandy sighed. "Not tonight. I'm going to the track right after work, and then I'm making dinner with Jenny. Tomorrow, maybe." She sighed again as Di gave her a stern look. "Tomorrow, for sure."

She hadn't really been planning to go to the track after work. She was tired and had just been there the night before. However, she had _especially_ not been planning to call Bah. It wasn't that she thought Di would force her to do it, but Sandy felt bad not having a legitimate reason for wanting time to work up the nerve. In the meantime, she felt obligated to go running in lieu of a phone call.

Sandy parked at the track after leaving work late that afternoon and sighed, grabbing her shoes from the back seat and dragging herself out of the car. She ran four laps and then accepted that her heart was not in it. She hobbled off into the grass, lay down, and stared up at the sky. For a while she just lay there with her eyes closed, listening to the sounds of the distant traffic and the light wind blowing through the field.

Maybe Sandy hadn't been listening as closely as she thought, or maybe she dozed off, because she failed to hear the sound of a car pulling into the parking lot. A moment later, she felt shade fall over her face and opened her eyes.

Bah was standing above her. She let out a startled squeak and he jumped.

"Oh, God. I'm sorry. Were you asleep?"

Sandy sat up. "No. Why'd you sneak up on me?"

He frowned. "I didn't. I called your name twice as I was walking over. I think the problem was that you were absolutely sleeping just now." He dropped down next to her on the grass. "How've you been?"

"I've been good," she replied, pulling at the grass and twisting a few blades of it between her fingers. "Just working. How about you?"

"Practices and stuff have really been kicking my ass," he said with a shrug. "It's been pretty hectic. But it's good. It's what I wanted."

Sandy continued tying pieces of grass together as she searched for words. "I'm sorry to hear that," she said after a moment, and then rolled her eyes. "Sorry."

Bah laughed a little and looked over at her. "What?"

"It just seems like there's a rulebook somewhere with all the things you're supposed to say to hockey players, and I haven't read it," she told him. "But I really do feel bad that you've been having a tough time."

He smiled. "Well, for starters, they give everybody that rulebook when you cross over the Minnesota border, just to be safe. They must have missed you, I guess." They laughed, and in the subsequent silence Bah fidgeted with his shoelaces. "I'm just so burnt out, you know? I feel like there's not enough hours in the day."

Sandy hummed sympathetically. "Will it always be this bad? Even after you get back from Europe?"

"Oh, it'll probably be worse when we get back," he said. "Our exhibition schedule lasts up until the week before the Olympics, and most of those games are on the road. It's a lot of traveling, but it's what I signed up for."

"Well," Sandy said, "at least you get to see Europe, I guess."

Bah snorted. "I guess that's true." He absently leaned forward, hugging his calves and unintentionally showing off how flexible he was. "Have you ever been there?"

"Europe?"

"Yeah."

Sandy shook her head. "No, but I want to go someday. Paris, maybe."

"Nah," he said, waving a hand at her. "There's no hockey in Paris."

She laughed. "Well, maybe sometimes people don't just go places because there's _hockey_ there. Do you ever just go somewhere for fun?"

Bah rolled his eyes and she laughed again. "Maybe when I'm retired?" He frowned at her and then a second later, a smile spread across his face. "Can I admit something to you?"

"Sure."

"I just came from the grocery store. You weren't there, so I came to the only other place where I've seen you other than my building."

Sandy frowned. "You were out looking for me?"

"Yep. And I'm so glad you were in the second place I checked, because it's a pretty big country."

She laughed. "Okay, so why were you trying to find me?"

He gave her an impatient look. "I feel like that should be obvious. I wanted to talk to you again before I left."

"Oh," Sandy said. "What day do you guys leave?"

"Friday. I'm cutting it kind of close, I guess, which is why I was out roaming the streets trying to track you down." He flopped over onto his back in the grass with a groan. "I haven't really had a chance until today because it's been so busy."

Sandy twisted around to get a look at Bah, who had closed his eyes. He certainly did look kind of exhausted. After a long moment had passed during which Sandy did not respond, Bah opened one eye and caught her looking. He grinned at her. "You probably think I'm just being dramatic."

"No, no," she said, shaking her head. "I believe you. I just—" She threw up her hands. "I don't know what to tell you."

He regarded her seriously for a moment through his one open eye and then closed it again. "I like that about you. You never pretend to have all the answers."

She lay back on the grass too, being careful not to get too close to him. "I wouldn't even know how to do that."

They lay there for a while without speaking. Eventually, Bah stretched his arms over his head and sat up, yawning. "I'd better get going," he said.

Sandy sat, too. She felt a little confused. "Okay."

He stood, reaching down to help her up. "You're wondering how come I'm leaving after I came out looking for you, right?" She nodded, frowning, and he grinned. "That poker face of yours needs some work."

"Oh," Sandy said, trying to keep her face neutral. She suddenly felt panicky again. "Do you want to come over for dinner? I'm sure my sister-in-law wouldn't—"

"I'm not in a big hurry to get away from you or anything, don't worry," he said. "I had plans to go lift weights with some of the boys tonight, and I forgot all about it because I was so set on chasing you around town."

"Oh," Sandy said again.

He drew a circle with his finger in the air to make her turn around and gently brushed the grass off of her back and then spun on the spot for her to return the favour. "Don't read too much into it."

Sandy picked the bits of dead grass and dirt off of Bah's shirt and clapped him on the shoulder when she was done. "So you're not going to track down the four other girls you're talking to?"

They started walking back to the parking lot together, and Bah shook his head. "No, they usually call me and let me know where they're going to be. It's a real inconvenience that you haven't been doing that."

She laughed. "I'll keep that in mind."

They stopped walking next to Sandy's car and Bah leaned against it, frowning slightly. "Do you think I could take you out when I get back from Europe?"

While Sandy had been expecting him to ask this and had even wanted him to ask, the question caused her stomach to drop slightly. The same odd, guilt-adjacent feeling started to crawl down her spine, and she turned to look at him, her hand on the car's door handle. "Sure," she said. "That would be fun."

She had a feeling that her poker face was failing her again and that her response didn't seem genuine, but Bah didn't mention it. "Great," he said, pushing off of the car. "I'll give you a call, then?" Sandy nodded, and he started backing away. "See you around."

She busied herself while he got into his car and drove off with taking off her running shoes. She tossed them on the seat next to her and, looking around her to make sure that Bah had indeed gone, dropped her forehead on the steering wheel. The car horn emitted a short honk. Sandy allowed herself a few moments of self-loathing in the parking lot of the track before she headed home, not wanting to be late to help Jenny.

Helping Jenny cook, as it turned out, meant that Sandy got to stand in the kitchen holding a big glass of wine, watching Jenny prepare dinner. "I sometimes have a glass of wine while I get everything ready," Jenny explained, taking vegetables out of the fridge for a salad. "But I can't now because of this," she said, pointing at her stomach. "So someone has to, otherwise the whole mood is off."

"Well, I'm always happy to help."

Jenny grinned and started rinsing lettuce. "So how are you liking working at the store? That was so nice of your friend to set you up there. You know, Will seemed pretty excited that you were spending time with someone other than us."

"So was I," Sandy said. "No offense," she added, and Jenny shrugged. "It's good so far, though. I don't think it'll be something I do long term but I'm glad to be doing something."

"S'good," Jenny said. She started tearing the lettuce into small pieces.

"Are you sure I can't help you at all?"

Jenny shook her head firmly. "Yep. Just stay over there and do your part," she said, pointing at Sandy's glass. Sandy obediently sipped. "What do you think you want to do, you know, long term?"

Sandy shrugged. "I hadn't really thought about it. I got good grades in the typing classes I took in high school, so maybe something in an office?"

"That would be good for you," Jenny said. "There's probably a fair few openings in the city, and you're not too far away." She paused, dropping the lettuce into a bowl and drying her hands. "Are you sure you don't want to go to college? You could always study business if you wanted to work in an office."

Sandy had a feeling something like this would be coming. She knew Jenny meant well, and so she took a moment to reply, staring into her glass. "I don't even know what I'd want to study," she said. "It's not like I had one really strong interest growing up and that has a job that corresponds with it like you or Will did. I haven't had to think about it for a while, so it's a little overwhelming."

Jenny considered this as she sliced a pepper and added the pieces to the salad. "That makes sense. I know you're probably tired of hearing about it." She put the knife down and sighed, turning to look over at Sandy. "And Will and I know how smart you are. But we worry, you know. And I know it's not our job to worry about you, but—"

"It's okay," Sandy said. "I don't mind." She felt like she was standing and talking to someone thirty years older than she was, and not her twenty-seven year old sister in law. "I could do worse than having you and Will care about me."

"Okay, hang on," Jenny said, moving to the sink and vigorously washing her hands. "I gotta come over there and hug you. Don't let me drink any of your wine."

Later that night, after dinner was done and the dishes were put away and Jenny and Will had retired to bed, Sandy sat up on the couch, several glasses of wine working their way through her system, thinking. She considered the various ways in which people in her life—Jenny, and by extension Will, and Di—were trying to fix her. She doubted they even knew they were doing it, but Sandy felt aware of everyone's choice to subtly prod her in the direction of what they thought was the right thing to do, whether it was going back to school or pursuing Bah. She wasn't used to this kind of guidance, because Ray's type of advice had generally amounted to, "I dunno, kiddo, you're smart enough to figure it out."

For the most part, Ray had been right. It wasn't as though Sandy _wasn't_ smart enough to figure it out. She had accidentally blurted out her exact opinion on the college and work issue to Jenny. Sandy _hadn't_ had to consider what she would do for the rest of her life prior to leaving Washington, at least not seriously, and as a teenager she had made no serious plans. This was in stark contrast to Will, who had been doing nothing but making plans since the moment he had been able to form one. Sandy had faith that it would work itself out, less out of confidence in herself than from the understanding that it _had_ to work itself out for her to be a functioning member of society.

The Bah situation, on the other hand, was a less pressing issue, but it had quickly worked its way into the forefront. Realistically, she had only been alone for a little over a month, and during that month, she had already gotten involved with someone else. It hadn't been her intention, but Sandy felt slightly comforted by the speed at which she had started to move on. And, again, she felt a twinge of guilt. Had her relationship with Ray really meant so little? A moment later, the resultant pang of annoyance followed. She could do whatever the hell she wanted. Sandy was an adult. But, when she thought about it logically...

Maybe, Sandy considered, jumping immediately into something new was not the best idea. She had enjoyed the time she spent with Bah. Objectively, he seemed like a good guy, but maybe it was too fast. It wasn't responsible to force it, and she had just met him through a combination of dumb luck and Di's forcefulness. Yes, she thought, maybe it was a good thing that he would be gone for a month.

Comforted by the thought of having come up with reasonable solutions to half of her perceived problems, Sandy turned off the living room light and went to bed.

Hours later, she rolled over, wide awake, and groaned into her pillow. It was almost four thirty in the morning, and she had been agonizing over Bah from the moment she got into bed. What if he didn't know she wasn't prepared to date someone new? What if she still wasn't ready when he got back from Europe? What if he kept calling and she ended up hurting his feelings? He didn't deserve to be strung along.

Sandy sat up in bed. She had to tell him—before he left. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and went into the kitchen, clutching the chunk of cardboard on which Bah had scribbled his phone number. As she picked up the phone and started to dial, Sandy remembered what time it was, and she hung up. Not knowing what to do with the sudden burst of late-night energy, she quietly went back into her bedroom, pulled on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, and left the house.

She started walking in the direction of Bah's apartment complex before she had really convinced herself that going there was a good idea. By the time she rounded the corner on the building, though, Sandy had never been more sure of anything in her life. It was really for the best for her to make sure Bah didn't have any misconceptions about what she wanted. Maybe in a few months, when Sandy had a better grasp on how it felt to just be alone they could go and get a coffee. This was reasonable, she thought. The time of night at which she was telling him this was unfortunate, to be sure, but Sandy didn't know when she would have the combination of wine residuals and late-night jitters to inspire bravery again.

Sandy pressed the button for Bah's apartment number on the directory and waited. She stood there long past the point where she started to feel like no one would answer. Just as she was turning to leave, there was a small burst of static on the intercom.

"Yeah?"

She considered not saying anything and fleeing down the street. Really, did she need to speak to him that very minute? In the end, she asked, "um, Bah? Is Bah there?"

There was an indistinct grunting sound on the other end, followed by a buzz, and the door unlocked. Sandy, feeling like all of her late-night confidence had been zapped out of her, went inside.

The guy who was standing there waiting when Sandy came down the hall was not Bah. It was a smaller, slightly grumpy-looking guy who had clearly been asleep. "Hello," he said, his voice croaky and quiet.

For a second, Sandy considered the option of just taking off running down the hall with great interest. She swallowed the lump in her throat and said, "hi. I'm really sorry to bother you this late at night. I'm—Is Bah here?"

"Yeah, but he's sleeping," the guy said, suppressing a yawn with the back of his hand. "Is it urgent? Should I go get him?"

Thinking that it would be even more rude to wake this poor other guy up and then _not_ talk to Bah, Sandy nodded.

The guy disappeared into one of the bedrooms while Sandy stood out in the hallway near the open apartment door, hovering like a shitty vampire who hadn't yet been invited inside. The other guy emerged with Bah trailing after him, his eyes narrowed with tiredness and his hair rumpled and sticking up in the back. He stopped at the sight of Sandy. "Oh," he said. "Hey."

Sandy waved. "Sorry."

The other guy disappeared into the other bedroom, closed the door, and they heard him _flump_ down on a bed. Bah beckoned her inside the apartment and shut the door. "What for?"

She raised her hands and gestured around her. "This. It's almost five."

Bah backed up until he was sitting on one of the arms of the couch. "Well, I guess that's my fault. I told you to come whenever. I should have expected this." There was a long pause during which he stared at her across the room, waiting for her to speak. "Was there... any reason in particular you decided to stop by tonight?"

"Oh. Yeah." Sandy stayed standing near the door and folded her arms. "It's—um, okay. I just wanted to talk to you about—"

"Hey, is it nice outside right now?" Bah cut her off, holding up one of the curtains and peering out. "Do you want to go for a walk?"

"Right now?"

He shrugged. "I mean, we can stay here if you want, but I don't really want to keep Pav and Wellsy up. The other guys living here," he said, seeing her about to ask. Sandy thought Pav and Wellsy sounded like the names of two dogs. He jerked his thumb in the direction of the bedroom. "You just met Pav." He grabbed a hooded sweatshirt that had been discarded on the couch and pulled it on, keeping the hood up around his head. "C'mon, come walk with me. Maybe we'll see the sun come up."

She couldn't tell if he was joking about the sunrise, but she led the way out of the apartment building. The street where Bah lived was completely silent, with no traffic or other pedestrians. The cool morning air brushed against her flushed cheeks as Sandy tried to formulate a coherent thought. She felt ridiculous. They quietly walked for a moment before Bah said, "Look, as nice as this is—"

"Right," Sandy said. "Sorry. I'm just trying to think of a way to say this without sounding—without sounding stupid."

"Okay. I mean, take your time."

Sandy exhaled. "All right. Okay." She paused again and took a deep breath.

"Are you about to tell me that you killed somebody? It can't be that bad. What's going on?"

She laughed. "Look, I know that we just met, but I feel like the little bit of time that we've spent together has been really… nice. Do you feel that way, too?"

Bah yawned against the back of his hand and nodded. "Sorry. Yeah."

"Right. And I don't want to seem like I'm jumping to conclusions or anything, but I feel like I should tell you that I don't think I can start dating anybody right now. I just recently ended a relationship—that's actually why I'm out here—and I just—I don't know if I'm ready to move on yet. Does that make sense?"

He was quiet for a while, his face slightly hidden in the shadow of his hood. When he turned to look at her, he was grinning. "Did you just break up with me before we ever got a chance to go out?"

"No—"

"No, I think I'm pretty sure that's what just happened," Bah said. "That has to be the first time that's happened to anybody." He looked down at her, and, seeing the look on her face, he said, "you know I'm just bugging you, right?"

Sandy shrugged. "I know. I was just worried that you were going to think I was an idiot for coming to see you tonight."

"No, of course not. It was clearly important enough to keep you up this late. And I think I understand what you're talking about." He put his hands in the front pocket of his sweatshirt and sighed. "See, now I feel bad for making you come to the party and for coming on so strong. I wish you could have told me."

She shrugged again. "That's not what this is about. I wouldn't have done any of that stuff if I didn't want to. If I didn't like you a little bit."

"Oh, just a little bit?"

Sandy held up her thumb and forefinger about a half an inch apart. "Yeah, maybe this much," she said, and they both laughed. "But, really, though, you're funny and good-looking and you're easy to talk to, and honestly in any other circumstance it would be a dream come true that I ever met you at all."

A jogger came up behind them then, led by a dog on a leash. Bah glanced up at the still dark sky and shook his head in disbelief at the audacity of this person. "So, you're saying the problem is that you don't want to get into something else while you're still hung up on this last guy you were with?"

Sandy nodded. "And I just wanted to get out in front of it. I wouldn't want to lead you on or anything."

He stopped walking. Sandy took a few more steps before realizing Bah wasn't with her anymore, and she turned to look back at him. He was looking at her with an odd expression on his face. "I guess I'm glad you said something now," he said after a moment of silence. "Because I won't lie, I've been thinking about you kind of a lot since the weekend, and I also like _you_ just a tiny bit. But now that I know this is how you feel, I don't really know what to think."

Sandy had expected this, but hearing him express his uncertainty made her worry. What if she had screwed up something that would have been meaningful? This reaction made Sandy feel oddly optimistic, considering how she felt when she first moved to Burnsville. It was an odd, conflicted series of emotions.

Something of her thoughts must have shown on her face, because Bah frowned. "What? What's happening in your head right now?"

"It's nothing. Really," she said as he continued to watch her with deep skepticism. "I just feel kind of relieved."

"Hmm," Bah said. "Well, not too sure whether I should be hurt by that or not. Do you want to elaborate at all?"

"It's just kind of nice to feel like a human being again, if that makes sense," Sandy said. "I haven't really in a while. Not since I left home."

Bah was watching her sadly. "Kinda seems like he did a number on you."

Sandy considered this. "I think if you look at it objectively, I did a number on myself." She shrugged. "In the long run it'll be good," she said, feeling like she should just get that phrase tattooed on her forehead.

"If you say so," Bah said, and he started walking again. The sun was starting to brighten the colour of the sky to the east, and as they passed near the elementary school where Jenny taught, Bah led them across the grass to the playground.

They settled on the swings and very quickly started competing to see who could go the highest. Sandy relished the sensation of feeling like a little kid again, pumping her legs and leaning as far back as she could when she swung forward. It occurred to her that she had been trying to be an adult since the summer that she graduated high school, when she first met Ray. She'd traded in these types of moments for being the kind of person who was enough of a grown up to be with him.

Dragging her feet on the ground, Sandy skidded her swing to a halt and twisted around, looking up at Bah, who continued to swing. She still felt guilty for reasons that she couldn't quite understand. It wasn't as if she thought she'd never meet _anyone_ ever again, but she'd only lived in Minnesota for a month. Bah was the type of person Sandy had crushes on in high school; he was free-spirited but simultaneously seemed dedicated to hockey in a way that was impressive and attractive. He seemed to be around her age. The fact that she was considering these things after only spending time with Bah twice felt like a positive thing. Logically, he was exactly what Sandy needed, but she couldn't get herself past the odd feeling of guilt that panged around in her chest whenever she thought about Ray.

Bah stopped pumping his legs, lowering himself to a safe height, and jumped. Sandy watched him arc through the air and land on the dewy grass, laughing at the pained expression on his face when he returned to the swings. "That's very hard on the knees," he told her. "It never hurt that much when I was a kid."

"Guess you're getting old."

He shuddered theatrically at the very idea and sighed, settling back onto his swing. "You know, I'm glad you came to visit me. It's kind of nice to be out and awake when nobody else is. I'd rather not make a habit of it, but just this once it's nice."

"Yeah," Sandy said. "And I'm glad we got a chance to talk before you left for Europe. It would have felt weird not saying anything and then having you be gone for a month."

"Mmm," he said. "Well, you never know. I could meet a nice Swedish girl when we're out there, and then we've got absolutely nothing to worry about."

Sandy scoffed. "What would you even have to talk about with someone from Sweden?"

"That's none of your business. You're going to feel pretty silly for dumping me tonight when we get back and I'm dating a European model. You will feel just ridiculous, Sandy." He grinned over at her, and then he sighed again and said, "you know, I wish I could have gotten a chance to take you out on a date for real."

"What would we have done?"

Bah twisted the chains of his swing around, thinking about it. He closed his eyes, lifted his feet off the ground, and spun as the chain unraveled. "Maybe an amusement park," he told her once he'd stopped spinning. "You know, like Valleyfair, outside of the city? We could have gone there. That would have been fun."

Sandy looked up at the gradually brightening sky. Streaks of colour cut through the dark blue of the night. She wondered what time it was. "I would have liked that. I always liked amusement parks."

He was quiet for a while, and eventually he said, "can you tell me about the guy you were with before?"

"Why?"

"I don't know," he said. "He has a pretty significant influence on everything that you do. I'm not trying to be nosy or anything like that—if you don't want to talk about it, you don't have to. I want to know you, is all. The more that we don't talk about it, the wilder my imagination will run about this guy, you know? I wonder what could have happened that was so bad that you had to come all the way across the country to get away from it."

"It's not—" She paused. There wasn't any sense in downplaying it. Her decision to go speak to Bah that night had been entirely brought about by feelings related to Ray. He lurked in the background of her thoughts, whether she acknowledged him there or not. In the end, she shrugged. "It's just a very long story. I'm sorry. I don't want to seem like I'm deliberately trying to be mysterious, but it's just—all you need to know right now is that it was kind of messy and I'm not really over it yet."

Bah made a thoughtful sound. "Do you think you will be?"

She nodded. "Of course. I'm not _ruined_ for all men for the rest of my life. The relationship I had with Ray was really important to me for a lot of different reasons, and now that it's over I feel like I have to completely re-learn how to be by myself and not a piece of this two-person puzzle. I hope I'm not making it sound too dramatic."

"No, you definitely are," Bah said, and they both laughed. "But I get it. And see, now I have a name—it was Ray. Pretty soon you'll tell me everything and you won't even notice the transition."

Sandy grinned at him. "I hope so. And I think this has made me feel better a little faster than I would have otherwise. I appreciate that."

Bah looked over at her, a thoughtful expression on his face. He seemed to be trying to launch a plan of attack, and after a moment he said, "I'm gonna propose something that'll probably sound selfish and terrible, but just hear me out."

"Okay."

"You don't want to get stuck with another boyfriend, but you like spending time with me. Is that right?" He looked at Sandy expectantly, and she nodded. "Good. Okay. And I like you, but realistically, I'm here to play hockey. But there are times when I feel like I need distance from hockey to clear my head, and I feel like spending time with you would be great for that. And, I mean, don't get me wrong or anything, my goal here is to make this damn hockey team. My road to actually being in Lake Placid in February isn't as smooth as some of the guys on the team, so I need to work really, really hard. And having to constantly worry about somebody else would just be extra stress."

Sandy frowned. "I don't think I require _constant_ attention."

He shook his head. "No, I don't either, but that's the kind of person I am. I'd be worried about how you were doing _all the time_. I'm a very good boyfriend. You're missing out here, if I'm being honest. But just listen—we're both in situations right now where having a relationship—an actual, real, adult relationship isn't the most practical thing, right? So why don't we just _not_ do that?"

"Well," Sandy said, "I was kind of under the impression that that's what we already decided to do. You just said a bunch of stuff and ended up at the same point."

"No, no," he said, shaking his head. "I mean, why don't we spend time together while I'm living here, and you can get used to feeling like a person again and all that, and I can maintain some sanity by getting away from hockey sometimes by getting to hang around with a girl I like. And then, come February, we evaluate and if we decide that it was just fun for a while, then we go our separate ways. No expectations." He finished speaking and nodded his head once, with an air of finality.

Sandy considered this. The way that Bah had pitched this idea made it seem a little like he was tricking her into doing something, and failed to take into account the possibility that it could all go horribly wrong. What if one of them met someone else? What if somebody got hurt? It seemed to be almost a certainty that someone _would._ But on the other hand, he was proposing something that Sandy thought, if executed correctly, would be uniquely therapeutic for her. She appreciated the idea of no expectations. With Ray she had buckled under the weight of expectations.

She hadn't spoken for at least a minute, and so Bah cleared his throat. "I mean, if you want to say no, you can feel free to say no..."

Sandy looked up. "No—no, it's not that. I'm just weighing the pros and cons."

"All right. Let's talk about them."

She hummed. "Well, you go first. Name a pro."

"Hmm," he said. "Well, there's this." He reached out and grabbed the chain of Sandy's swing, pulled her over to where he was, and kissed her. Then he released her chain, letting her swing back.

"That's a _very_ good point," Sandy said, putting her hands on her now-warm cheeks.

He grinned, spinning around again on his swing and resting his head against the twisted chain. "I thought so, too. Look, if you want to think about it, that's fine. You can take all the time you need—short of, you know, February of next year. I just think you're interesting and I want to spend some more time with you, and if this is what I need to do to make that happen, I'm okay with that."

While Bah spun, unraveling his chain, Sandy sighed. "Why don't we just try it and see how it goes for a little while?"

"Okay," Bah said, digging his feet into the sand and stopping himself from spinning to look over at Sandy. "Why don't we make plans for when I get back, and barring a change of heart or a Swedish supermodel, we go from there?"

She nodded. This seemed reasonable, since it gave her almost a full month to actually weigh the pros and cons of this without the distraction of having Bah _there_ influencing her. "Okay. Deal. What kind of plans?"

"Valleyfair?" he suggested, shrugging. "Could be fun to actually do that." The lights in the houses across the street from the playground were starting to come on as Bah stood. "I'm glad you came to see me tonight," he said again.

Sandy was glad, too. They parted ways on the street outside Bah's apartment building, as the sun began to poke over the tops of the trees. "Good luck in Europe," she called after him as he walked away, having almost forgotten to tell him this.

"Oh—thanks," he said, taking a few steps back in her direction. "Do you want anything? Like, a souvenir or something like that?" He snuck forward another step.

"Just stay away from Swedish supermodels. I didn't know how much I feared them until tonight."

Bah closed the gap between them and grinned. "They'd have to be interested in me for you to have anything to worry about, so I think it'll be okay. " He put his arms around her and rested his chin on the top of her head. "I'll call if I can. I already promised my mom I'd try to call her, but we figure it'll be expensive, so—"

Sandy shook her head. "You don't have to. Just—play good, and everything I'm supposed to say." She looked up and saw him smiling.

"'Play good' is about the most generic thing you could say, but you'll learn," he said, and kissed her again. When they broke apart and he took a step away from her, he was still smiling. "I'll see you in a bit."

"Yeah," Sandy said, stepping back as well. "See ya."

Sandy spent the walk home through the early morning light wondering how her plan to tell Bah that the timing was wrong had gone so terribly.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6 - September 6 - 25, 1979**

When Sandy told Di about the conversations she had with Bah, Di let out a celebratory whoop. "See?" she said, standing on her toes to peer over the top of the dressing room stall at Sandy. "I _told_ you! God, you're like a girl in a romance novel, Sandy. You know that, right?"

The two of them were at the shopping mall, searching for a dress for Di to wear to her cousin's wedding. It had been about a week since Bah and the hockey team left for Europe.

Sandy grimaced and sank a little deeper into the plush armchair she was seated in near where Di was trying on dresses. "Yeah, just like everybody's favourite romance novel, where the girl goes out wandering around in the middle of the night, half drunk, looking for some boys to kiss."

"Well, I didn't say it was a _good_ romance novel," Di giggled. "So, now what?"

"What do you mean?"

Di came out of the dressing room in a salmon coloured belted dress out and spun on the spot for Sandy to inspect. "I mean, what are you going to do now? When does he come back? Do you think this looks terrible with my hair?"

"September 25th, and no, it doesn't," Sandy said. "But I thought you said you wanted green."

"I did." Di studied herself in the mirror, apparently checking the effect of her hair when combined with pink. "I don't want to look like Christmas, though. It has to be a certain kind of green."

Sandy snorted. "You're crazy. You could probably wear a sweater and some jeans and look better than the bride."

"You don't get it. You're blonde, you've never clashed with anything in your entire life."

Sandy chose to ignore this. She handed the next hanger, which was holding a short black dress patterned with pink flowers, to Di. "Try this one on next."

Di screwed up one side of her mouth. "I don't know about black to a wedding. Don't think I don't see you trying to change the subject," she added, snatching the hanger out of Sandy's hand and retreating into the dressing room.

"I'm not," Sandy said. "There's just not that much to tell."

"I'll be the judge of that, thanks," Di said. "What do you think will happen when he gets back?"

Sandy shrugged. "We didn't really talk specifics. We're going to an amusement park at _some point,_ but we didn't set out a date or anything."

Di hummed lightly. "Do you want to go?"

"Yeah."

"Are you sure?"

"Why wouldn't I be sure?"

Di came out of the dressing room wearing the black dress and shrugged. "You just seem like you're not sure. How do we feel about this? Is black too drab for a wedding?"

Sandy shifted the pile of dresses sitting in her lap and considered Di. "I like it. It's not drab—there's flowers on it. Don't think I don't see _you_ trying to change the subject."

"You're right," Di said, and Sandy didn't know if she was talking about the dress or changing the subject until she added, "and this isn't exactly a _happy_ family wedding, anyway."

"Why n—"

"I think this is the one. Let me just pay for it, and then we'll go get a coffee so we can actually talk," Di said.

Di bought the dress and the two of them walked about a block from the mall to a restaurant. Sandy dumped sugar into a cup of black coffee as Di aggressively stirred her too-thick chocolate milkshake.

"So?" Di asked, staring expectantly at Sandy.

"So what?" Sandy said.

Di shrugged. "Tell me what you really think. You know you can tell me."

"Why don't _you_ tell _me_ why you're not happy to go to your cousin's wedding?"

"Oh, that?" Di batted the question away with a wave of her hand. "That's nothing. Boring. It's just family drama that I don't want to be a part of but I have to because it's _family_. Now, go on. Talk to me. Go on," she said, nudging Sandy's shin under the table with the toe of her shoe.

Sandy frowned at Di for a moment before speaking, making the conscious decision to speak honestly. "I just hate feeling so unsure. I feel like I stopped trusting that I know what to do."

"What do you mean?"

"I still don't know if leaving Everett was the best thing for me. So I feel like doing something else where I don't feel completely sure of myself is…not smart. Like there's something wrong with me if I don't sort out my first problem before moving on to another one."

"Hmm." Di considered this as she tried to drink her milkshake. "I think there are worse scenarios than having two things off-kilter in your life. You put too much pressure on yourself. Nothing has happened to make you think you made the wrong choice."

This was fair, Sandy thought. She had been second guessing herself ever since she had made the decision to leave Ray, and for what? Di was right, nothing catastrophic had happened to make Sandy sure that leaving was a mistake. Really, she had no reason to doubt herself. The root of it was that creeping feeling of guilt every time she got close to enjoying herself, the one that whispered in her ear, " _shouldn't you be sad right now_?"

Additionally, Sandy didn't know what the acceptable amount of time was to mourn the loss of her relationship with Ray, and she didn't know how to be appropriately sad about it, having been the one who ended it. She ran this by Di, who frowned.

"Can't say that's ever happened to me," she said.

"Right. I don't know what my problem is."

Di shook her head. "Maybe you don't have a problem. Maybe you being as _okay_ as you are is a sign that you did the right thing. Did you see yourself kissing a guy and making plans to go ride roller coasters so soon?"

"No," Sandy said.

Shrugging, Di turned her attention back to her milkshake. "Well, maybe that's your answer. I know you've been through a lot, but maybe you should think about the possibility that something _nice_ might happen to you."

When Di dropped Sandy off at the house that evening, the phone was ringing. Will had said he and Jenny were going to the doctor and then were going out to eat, so Sandy hurried to pick it up. A familiar voice on the other end greeted her.

"Sandy! It's Gayle Schneider—do you remember me from the party a while ago? I'm Buzz Schneider's wife?"

Thinking that she'd be more likely to know Buzz Schneider as being married to Gayle and not the other way around, Sandy smiled. "Of course I remember you. How are you?"

"I'm great! I asked Bah for your number before he left so we could meet up while all the boys are gone, I hope that's all right."

"It's okay," Sandy said. "I guess I just kind of thought you would be going to Europe with the team."

Gayle let out an incredulous scoff. "Me? They don't let wives go on team trips. It's too bad—they're going to see so much great stuff over there when they're not sleeping and travelling and playing hockey."

"Sounds like hard work," Sandy said.

"Yeah, I wouldn't mind if my job took me on trips to Europe for a month." Gayle laughed. "Anyway, what are you up to tonight? Do you want to go get a drink somewhere?"

"I can't, I'm not old enough," Sandy said.

"God, everybody's so _young_ ," Gayle said. "How old _are_ you?"

"Twenty. I'll be twenty-one in October, though."

Gayle scoffed again like she was offended at the very thought of being twenty. "Well, why don't I come to you? I'll bring beer!"

Sandy told Gayle where she lived, and watched from the front window as Gayle walked up to the house with a six-pack of beer twenty minutes later. "I'm not trying to liquor you up on a Thursday night, I promise," Gayle said immediately as Sandy opened the door.

Sandy grinned. "I'll take your word for it."

The two of them settled down at the kitchen table and each opened a beer. "So how have things been?" Gayle asked. "I heard a heavily edited story about how you've been going on walks in the middle of the night and watching the sunrise?"

"Oh." Sandy felt her cheeks getting warm. "I didn't think he'd tell people about it. I thought afterwards that it all made me sound kind of nuts."

"I didn't think so," Gayle said. "I can tell you that Pav definitely wasn't a fan of any grand romantic gesture that involved waking him up in the middle of the night, but what does he know?"

It took Sandy a second to remember who this was before she recalled Bah's small, grumpy roommate. "Oh, God, was he mad?"

Gayle took a sip of her beer and shook her head. "No, Pav doesn't really get mad. He didn't 'understand the urgency,' I think were his exact words."

"Well, if he ever figures it out, tell him to let me know. I felt like such a jackass."

"Don't be silly," Gayle said. "I think it was kind of romantic."

"Well," Sandy said, "I guess he didn't tell you that my original plan was to tell him that I didn't want to get involved."

Gayle blinked. "Really? He seemed to think that you ended up in a very different place."

"We did, but only after he talked me into it. If I had gotten to do what I had actually wanted to do, it wouldn't have been really romantic at all. It would have been..." Sandy sighed. "It would have just been pretty rude of me."

A few moments passed while Gayle processed this information. She took another sip of her beer and fiddled a little with the cap. "I guess it's a good thing he's so persuasive, then. Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"Why did you _need_ to be convinced? You seemed to like him the last time we talked. What changed?"

Sandy sighed. "It's kind of a long story."

"Mmm," Gayle said. "So, none of my business?"

"No, it's not that." Sandy shook her head. "There's a lot of stuff going on with me and I decided that it wasn't good time to get involved with Bah. Or anyone else, honestly. But now I don't really know what I'm going to do." She absently peeled the label off her bottle and sighed. "You know, sometimes I worry that it seems like I'm trying to be more complicated than I actually am."

Gayle laughed. "Oh, honey, it's not that. You don't seem like you're _trying_ to do anything. There's clearly more to you than what you let people know. If you don't want to talk about it, nobody can make you."

Sandy frowned. This seemed like an odd opinion for Gayle to have, considering Sandy had told her basically nothing about herself. "What have you _heard_?"

Having shown her hand a little bit, Gayle grinned slyly. "Caught me. Don't be mad—I asked Bah to tell me about you."

"Oh." Sandy thought about this, a little irritated that Bah had said anything. Eventually she decided that it would be hard to keep anything from Gayle if she wanted to know. "What did he tell you?"

"He said that you moved here to live with your brother and that your decision to do that was related to your ex somehow." Gayle shrugged. "If he knew more than that, he did a good job of hiding it."

"No, that's pretty much all I told him." Sandy finished off her beer. "Can I have another one of these?"

Gayle pushed the beer across the table. "Knock yourself out," she said. "Look, if I'm being too nosy just tell me, but isn't it worse to leave him with more questions?"

"Worse how?" Sandy asked, twisting the cap off the bottle. "It's just—it's a very long story. I'll end up telling him if we keep spending time together, though. You too, probably," she added.

Gayle feigned great shock. "Me? I don't even _want_ to know," she said, and they both laughed.

They continued drinking and chatting for a while, and about a half an hour later, Will and Jenny pulled up to the house.

Gayle leaned back in her chair and craned her neck, trying to see out the window. "Is that my cue to leave?"

"It doesn't have to be. I feel like there's so much I still have to ask you."

This caught Gayle's attention, and she turned back around to face Sandy as the front door opened. "We're home," Will called from the doorway.

"Hi," Sandy said. "We're just in here."

"We—?" Will came around the corner, looking curious. "Oh, hi," he said, holding out a hand for Gayle to shake. "I'm Will."

Jenny came into the kitchen too, snaking an arm around Will's waist. "You made another _friend_ ," she said, flashing Sandy a thumbs up. "I'm Jenny—nice to meet you.

Gayle shook both of their hands. "Gayle Schneider," she said. "I'm a friend of Sandy's. Good to meet you guys, too."

"For sure," Will said. "We won't be in your hair for too long, we—"

"Oh, don't worry about it," Gayle said. She got to her feet. "I was just getting ready to go. Do you want to come out to the car for a second, Sandy?"

Sandy nodded. Once they were outside, Gayle leaned against her car and turned to Sandy, an expectant look on her face. "So, what do you want to ask me?"

Feeling a little put on the spot, Sandy thought about how she wanted to put her thoughts into words. "You have so much information about what I should be expecting," she said after a moment. "I feel like such a moron when I try and talk to Bah about hockey and it's a major part of his life."

"Oh," Gayle laughed. "It's not like taking care of a fish or gerbil or something. There's not certain things you have to do to keep him happy and alive. He's still just a _person."_

"I know that," Sandy said. "My issue is that I didn't grow up here and so I'm missing that fanaticism that everyone else seems to have—I think I make that really obvious every time I mention it."

Gayle drummed her fingers against the car and hummed thoughtfully. "You know something kinda funny? When Buzzy and I first started seeing each other seriously, I felt like I was being brought into some kind of cult. I'm not even kidding," she said, grinning as Sandy laughed. "I know I grew up around it and everything, but I didn't really think about how dedicated he actually is. And don't get me wrong, that's part of what I love about him, but it's definitely something you should get ready to deal with if you want to spend more time with Bah. You're not going to be the top priority for most of the year and you just have to be content with that. And everything revolves around hockey. It dictates everything in your life: where you're going to live, when you're going to have kids, who your friends are—everything."

Sandy was quiet for a long moment as she thought about this. "Is that really how you feel?"

"I guess so." Gayle shrugged. "I wouldn't normally put it in so blunt of terms, but since you asked..." She sighed. "Why'd you have to make me start thinking about this? It's not as bad as I'm making it sound. We've seen the _world_ together, Buzzy and I. The last Olympics were in _Austria_ , for crying out loud. When would I have gotten the chance to go there otherwise? And I've made a lot of really good friends." She started talking faster, desperate to prove her point. "I hope I'm not scaring you off, because Bah really does seem like he likes you. Don't let me make you forget about that. He'd kill me if _I_ ruined this before he got a chance to do it himself. And besides, you were interested in him before you found out he was a hockey player. Just wait until you go to his first game."

"What do you mean?"

Gayle once again flashed that knowing Minnesotan smile. "When I was growing up and I first noticed how much girls like hockey players, I remember asking my mom why she thought that was. And do you know what she told me?" She waited expectantly for Sandy to shake her head. "She said that it's hard to resist someone who can show you how good they are at something. And it's true—well, it's true for us. Men hate it if you're better than they are at _anything_."

Gayle continued to speak, and as she did, Sandy suddenly was struck by a vivid memory of herself, freshly out of high school, watching Ray show her father something on a blueprint. She had no idea what they were talking about, but listening to Ray speak passionately about something he knew a lot about was riveting. By the time they finished speaking, Sandy had such a crush on Ray that her _stomach_ hurt. She wondered, considering what Gayle was telling her, if maybe he'd known what he was doing, but then dismissed this idea. That wasn't how Ray did things, and she doubted that there was a way of sexily being a structural engineer. Sandy put the thought to the back of her mind and tuned back in to what Gayle was saying.

"... anyway, I think you should go watch them practice or play when they get back before you make any decisions. Or maybe you'd better avoid doing that altogether if you want to think with a clear head. It's powerful stuff." She nodded with an air of finality and started to walk around her car. "If you have any more knowledge you want to mine from me, we can do this again."

Sandy continued to think about what Gayle had said long after she had gone back inside. The more factors presented themselves in the Bah Situation, the more confused she became. The life of a hockey player's wife, as Gayle presented it, didn't seem very appealing. Sandy wasn't sure if she wanted to have the whims of hockey decide everything for her. It seemed like taking a step backwards, considering everything that had happened back in Washington.

On the other hand, she also felt like the conversation she had with Gayle was somewhat premature. The fact of the matter was that she had known Bah for less than month. It was probably extremely wishful thinking to be considering what the future with him would look like.

But then again, Sandy felt oddly comforted by the fact that she was able to consider these things _at all_. Di's opinion had presented a point of view that Sandy hadn't considered. Maybe it was a sign that she had made the right choice in leaving home that she was already moving on.

It was all too complicated, too hard. Sandy decided, in the end, to just wait and see how she felt when Bah came back from Europe. She was getting too much outside influence, and maybe that was making things harder. It would surely be easier when Bah was at least on the same continent as Sandy.

The rest of the month passed relatively without incident, and in the early hours of the morning on September 25th, the phone rang. Sandy distantly heard Jenny, who was awake getting ready for school, answer it, and a few moments later, her bedroom door breezed open. "Sandy? Are you awake?"

"Kind of," Sandy mumbled into her pillow. She rolled over and sat up. "What's going on?"

"There's someone named Bob for you on the phone. Should I just tell him to call you back?"

Sandy scrambled out of bed. "Bob? Bah?"

"Well, that's what I thought he said, but that's definitely not a name. I left the phone on the counter for you."

All Sandy could hear when she picked up the phone was ambient chatter. "Bah?" she said, hearing Jenny chuckle as she sipped a glass of orange juice at the kitchen table.

The phone was fumbled around on the other end a little bit, and then: "Sandy? Are you there?"

Sandy turned her back on Jenny to hide the wide smile that cracked across her face at the sound of Bah's voice. "Hi. Oh my God. How are you?"

"I'm beat," he replied. "We're in New York right now, and we have a three-hour layover, so I thought I'd call you from a payphone here at the airport. It's—oh, shit. It's pretty early there, huh? I'm sorry. I feel like it should be afternoon right now. I'm all messed up."

Sandy suppressed a yawn with the back of her hand. "No, no, it's okay. So you'll be here today at some point?"

"Yeah," Bah said. Sandy heard someone call his name in the background, and he said, sharply and in her ear, "in a _minute_ , I'm on the _phone_! Sorry, Sandy," he said, more quietly. "Yeah, we'll be back there by noon, probably. What are your plans for the next couple of days?"

"I don't know," Sandy said. "I work on Thursday, but other than that there's nothing going on."

Bah started to speak but was interrupted by the sound of someone speaking over an intercom. He waited for the announcement to end. "Well, we have to do something. How about we go to Valleyfair tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow?" Sandy asked, surprised. "Don't you need a little time to, you know, get used to the time difference? It doesn't have to be that soon."

Bah scoffed. "Don't worry about me. I don't get jetlagged. Besides, Norway is seven hours _ahead_ of home, so that can only work in my advantage. We have a couple of days off before our game on Saturday, so it'll be fine. Don't worry about it."

He sounded so exhausted that Sandy definitely _was_ worried about it, and his reasoning where the time difference was concerned definitely didn't make much sense, but she agreed to come pick Bah up the next day. When she hung up the phone and turned around, Jenny was still sitting at the table, picking at her toast with an expectant look on her face.

"So, who was that?"


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7 - September 26, 1979**

There was a guy leaving Bah's building as Sandy approached the next morning. She vaguely recognized him, and thought he must have recognized her too, because he frowned at her like he was trying to place her face. "You're with Bah, right?"

Sandy was caught off guard by the question. "I—uh. I guess so?"

The guy nodded. "Yeah. I remember you from when we had people over that one night before we left. Are you visiting him right now?"

Sandy nodded.

He raised his eyebrows and let out a little chuckle. "Hopefully you didn't have anything too exciting planned." Without offering any further explanation, he took his keys out of his pocket and unlocked the door for her.

Sandy frowned. "Thanks." She felt like there was some obvious joke she wasn't a part of, but she couldn't imagine what it might be. When she knocked on Bah's apartment door, there was a clattering sound from inside and a moment later, Buzz Schneider appeared, holding an overflowing mug. Sandy watched the dark coffee inside slosh around and drip onto the floor, and Buzz seemed to realize this a second later.

"Ah, shit. Hi. Come on in. Watch your step." He moved aside for her to pass into the living room, and Sandy perched on the arm of the couch, watching as Buzz dropped a towel on the floor and guided it over the spilled coffee with his foot. Once he was done, he stood in the middle of the room, wiping off his mug. He looked over at her suddenly, frowning. "Hey, how did you even get in here? Did Bah give you a key?"

Sandy laughed. "No, no. There was a guy outside and he let me in. Sorry if I caught you in the middle of something," she told him. "Is Bah here?"

Buzz nodded, a half-smile spreading across his face. "He's asleep. We went out last night because we were all jetlagged and nobody could sleep." He paused and raised his mug to eye level, checking it.

"Oh. How'd that go?"

He looked at his watch. "Well, it's noon. Bah usually gets up pretty early—I stayed here after we got in and I don't think he even moved all night." Buzz shrugged. "I mean, he's definitely _alive_ in there. What are you and Bah supposed to be doing?"

"He said we'd go tyo Valleyfair," Sandy told him, feeling a bit disheartened, and Buzz grinned.

"The amusement park?" he asked. Sandy nodded, and he breathed in sharply through his teeth. "Oh, I don't know about that today," he said. "You might wanna go check on what kind of condition he's in. He's in the second bedroom."

Sandy hadn't really been expecting to be the one to wake Bah up that morning, but she went down the hallway and tried to quietly open the door. She could see, faintly in the light filtering through the drawn shades, the outline of Bah hanging over the side of his bed, his hand inches away from a wastebasket. She walked closer to him, touched his arm gently, and he jerked awake. "Huh?"

"Can I turn on the light?" Sandy asked. Bah dragged himself back up on the bed and grunted by way of confirmation, but he still groaned loudly into his hands when Sandy flicked the light switch. "So, Buzz said you guys had a long night," she said, perching on the corner of the bed.

Bah sat up, rubbing both hands on his face. "Tell me about it. I feel like my head's gonna explode."

Sandy drew her legs up underneath her. "Are you feeling too sick to go out today?"

"Hmm? _Oh._ No, we'll go. We're probably running late. Just one sec." He rubbed his face again, harder this time.

If Bah hadn't told her a day ago that they were going to go out that morning, Sandy would have felt sure that she had the wrong day. "It's okay, you know," she said. "We don't have to go today. We can just—"

But Bah dragged his legs over the side of the bed and laboriously stood. "No, we're definitely still going. Just give me a minute. Five minutes." He pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled loudly. "Oh, Christ. Okay, ten minutes, how 'bout?"

When he emerged nearly twenty minutes later, Sandy and Buzz were watching highlights of a North Stars pre-season game on the television. "We play them in a couple of nights," Buzz was telling her.

"Do you think you'll win?"

He shrugged. "Herb says he thinks they'll come out swinging against us because they know a lot of the guys on our team will go pro, and they're trying to protect their spots. It's their job, you know. So it's oddly political."

"Listen to this guy making excuses," Bah said, leaning against the arm of the couch. They watched for another minute or two before he stood up straight again and turned to Sandy. "You ready to go?"

The drive between the boys' apartments and the amusement park took about a half an hour, during which Sandy had to check repeatedly to see if Bah needed her to pull over for him to throw up. "I don't know if I'm going to be able to go on any rides with you today," he told her. "I'll just hold your purse and watch if you want."

Sandy regarded him with concern. "Honestly, Bah, we don't have to go. We can go the next time you guys have days off. You don't have to feel, you know, obligated or anything."

"I do—" Bah paused, holding the back of his hand to his mouth and puffing his cheeks out. "I do feel obligated," he continued a moment later. "We made these plans before I went to Europe."

"Are you gonna have fun holding my purse and watching me go on rides?"

He grinned at her. "I guess we'll have to see."

It turned out that Bah did not find watching Sandy go on rides much fun. After about a half an hour at the park, he wanted her to go on the High Roller, an intimidating wooden roller coaster that Sandy had ridden upon first arriving there, again, but this time he wanted to come too.

"Should we maybe try something less aggressive to be safe and see how you feel? Maybe the ferris wheel?" Sandy asked, noting that although Bah did look better now that he was out in the fresh air, he definitely didn't look good.

Bah shook his head. "I'm fine. See?" He hopped up and down on the spot, as if that proved anything. "Come on, it'll be okay."

Immediately it became apparent to both of them that it would not be okay. Sandy stared over at Bah, who was sucking in deep breaths as their cart climbed to the top as if he thought there wouldn't be air up there. As the cart started to decline, both of Bah's hands flew to his mouth and he screwed his eyes shut. He didn't move again until the cart had come to a complete stop, and then he wrenched at the restraints holding him in his seat until they flew off.

"Are you okay—?" Sandy started to ask, but Bah shook his head at her, scrambled out of his seat, and disappeared at a run.

She searched for a few minutes and discovered him hunched over a garbage can, his elbows propped on the rim of it. Three young children watched nearby, giggling and eating cotton candy. Sandy put her hand on Bah's back, and he started and turned to look at her.

"Oh. I'm really sorry about that." He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "That was so shitty. I can't believe that happened."

Sandy, who _could_ believe that happened, shook her head. "It's okay." She dug around in her purse and pulled out a stick of gum. "Do you at least feel better now?"

Bah let out a shaky breath and nodded, accepting the gum. "I feel like I should have taken a lesson from myself in college before we left Burnsville. You always feel a lot better after you throw up, right?" He seemed to defer this ruling to Sandy, who shrugged. "That's my experience, anyway. Maybe we should wait a bit before we go on that one again."

Sandy returned his smile warily, feeling somewhat guilty before she reminded herself that _Bah_ had been the one who insisted on coming. The children who had been watching Bah wandered away, satisfied that the show was over. Sandy sank down on a bench next to Bah's garbage can. "Do you think we should just go home?"

" _No_ ," Bah said, a little sharper than he seemed to have intended. He paused, catching Sandy's reaction. "Sorry." He sat down on the bench beside her. "I just wanted us to have some fun today after I was gone for so long, you know?"

Sandy smiled at him. "I know. It's okay. I'm having fun." She worried suddenly that there would a moment when Bah would kiss her—he seemed to be a fan of doing so unexpectedly, and she didn't believe enough in the healing properties of the old stick of gum she'd found at the bottom of her purse to feel excited at the idea. Luckily, he didn't particularly seem to be in the mood for it. He noticed her looking at him and scooted closer along the bench, putting his arm around her shoulders.

The two sat in companionable silence for a few minutes, watching the groups of people walk past. Although they had arrived fairly early on in the day, a decent crowd had accumulated in the park. Sandy studied a young couple seated at a picnic table on a patch of grass in the distance. The man was trying to feed the woman some of his ice cream cone. Chuckling at something that she was saying, his hand shook and he smeared a streak of strawberry ice cream across her cheek. Both of them burst out laughing, looking like a commercial for happy people. Sandy glanced up at Bah, who had leaned his head back and closed his eyes in the sun. She nudged him and he peeled one eye open. "Hmm?"

"How was Europe?"

Bah opened his other eye. "We ended up 7-2-1. We did pretty well over there."

"Seven wins, two losses, and a tie, or the other way around?"

"No, you're right," Bah laughed. "We tied one of our games against the Norwegian team. There's a fun story." He straightened up, pulling his arm away from Sandy's shoulders and turning slightly on the bench to face her. "Have I ever told you about our coach?"

Sandy shrugged. She remembered various things from the party, when she had listened to the boys talk about this man. He seemed terrifying. "I've heard some things. Why, what happened?"

"Well," Bah said, "we had just tied this game. And this team was... I mean, they were a fine enough team, but we should have been able to beat them. We were just _flat_ , you know? Just not playing at all as good as we could—as we had been for the entire time we were there. And so the whole time we were playing, I kept looking over at Herb out of the corner of my eye. You know how sometimes you can tell when somebody is just about to completely lose it?" He paused, and Sandy nodded. "It was like that. And I just hoped I wasn't standing there when he eventually did snap, but the game went on and on, and then once it was over, he makes us stay out there on the ice."

"Uh oh," Sandy said.

" _Yeah_. We tried to skate off the ice so we could go back to the hotel, and our assistant coach, Craig, goes, 'no, guys, just stay out there.' And I just…" Bah shook his head. "I knew it wouldn't be a good thing."

"So what'd he do? Yell at you guys out there?"

Bah grinned at her. "Oh no, we skated. We did Herbies. I don't think I've ever told you about that before. It's this skating drill Herb makes us do where we start at one end of the ice, skate to the blue line, skate back to the start, centre ice, back, the far blue line, back, and then all the way down and back."

"Oh, God." No wonder he was in such good shape, Sandy thought.

He nodded. "You betcha. And so we did a few of them at a time and then he'd let us skate once around the ice to catch our breath, and then he'd make us do some more. We don't usually do that many of them—he's not a maniac or anything. He's usually not, I guess. Anyway, we did them for so long that the caretaker of the rink shut the lights off on us, and even then he didn't let us quit. We just skated in the dark with him hollering at us."

The word "masochist" occurred to Sandy and she smiled to herself. "So at what point did he let you stop?"

At this, Bah threw his head back and laughed out loud. "I think he probably would have been content to still have us out there skating, but at one point during one of the laps we got to cool off, Magic—have you met Magic? Mark Johnson," he clarified, and Sandy shook her head. "Oh, I'll have to introduce you. Anyway, he smashed his stick on the glass and pretty soon after that we were allowed to leave. I would have done that right away if I'd known that was the key to getting him to let us stop." Bah smiled again. "We played that same team the next night. Guess how it went?"

Sandy grinned. "Probably not too flat?"

"We won 9-0," Bah said, and they both laughed. "So, I mean, I guess it worked, right? It got the desired result." He shook his head and turned to face front again, putting his arm back around Sandy's shoulders. "Anyway, it'll be good to be home for a little while."

Sandy leaned against him. "Any big plans?"

He shrugged. "I thought maybe my parents would come out but they're working, I think. So I'll probably just rest before our game on Friday, because we leave the next morning for about a week."

"You're going away again so soon?"

Bah smiled and nodded. "Yep. We're gone from the 30th until October 8th. I told you," he said as Sandy continued to look surprised. "I am a very busy man. We don't play a lot of games at home. You're going to have to start coming to practices and games if you want to see me."

"Are people allowed to watch your practices?" Sandy had been imagining secretive sessions in private locations, so as to keep the training secrets of the team away from prying eyes.

Bah nodded. "Of course. We practice at Roy Wilkins. Roy Wilkins Auditorium, in St. Paul," he said, noticing her not recognizing the name of the rink. "And so anyone can come in and watch. You honestly should sometime if you're not working—it might be fun."

"It _might_ be?" Sandy grinned. "I don't want to come and watch you skate until you throw up."

Bah rolled his eyes at her. "You already _saw_ that, though," he said, gesturing at the two of them. "I threw up in _public_ , in front of you today. You owe me this."

"I _told_ you that you shouldn't go on the ride!" Sandy laughed. "Somebody wanted to be tough and go on the roller coaster."

"Well, I hope I at least convinced you that I'm tough." He leaned over, catching her off guard and dropping a mint-scented kiss on her cheek. "It would mean a lot if you came sometime," he said, more seriously. "I'd like you to actually see what I do, other than watching my back as I beat you at running."

Sandy laughed again and nodded. "Okay. I'll come, but just let that coach of yours know that I won't be able to handle watching him be hard on you."

"Yeah, I'll tell him," Bah replied. "I'll make sure he knows. That will definitely make a difference."

They left Valleyfair shortly after, and Bah insisted that they go out to eat. They went to a diner along the highway and Bah told a harassed-looking waitress that he only wanted an order of dry toast. "It's the only thing I can eat," he explained to Sandy after she ordered a BLT sandwich and fries. "I'm sick."

She scoffed. "You're not _sick_ , you're hungover."

He _tsk_ ed at her and shook his head. "Not very sympathetic of you." They both laughed. "So, how was _your_ month? I never even asked."

"It was good. Pretty quiet," Sandy said. "I mostly just worked. I saw Gayle one night."

Bah raised his eyebrows at her as he took a drink of water. "Did you? What did you do?"

"She brought beer over to my house. She wanted to go to a bar, but, you know, I'm not old enough. So—"

"You're not?" Bah cut her off. "How old are you?"

It occurred to Sandy suddenly that she didn't know how old Bah was, either. She didn't even know his last name or where he was from, other than that it was called, mysteriously, "the Range." She didn't know Bah at all.

Sandy could feel herself frowning deeply, and Bah was watching her, an amused expression on his face. "What happened to you just now?"

"I just realized that I hardly know anything about you," she said.

He grinned. "You just realized that now? I must not be _at all_ interesting to you, if you haven't wondered enough to ask. What are you suddenly dying to know?"

For the next half hour, Sandy and Bah traded information across the scrubbed table of their booth. She found out that his last name was Harrington and that his middle name was Michael, and that his birthday was May 24th. He was twenty-two, and he had five siblings (three brothers, two sisters). "That's a lot of people in one house," Sandy said.

"Well, there's some years between all of us, but I'm definitely quicker than most in the bathroom in the morning. That's a question you would never think of asking, but I bet you're glad I answered it."

Bah had grown up in Virginia, Minnesota, which was about a three hour drive from Minneapolis. His dad drove a locomotive engine for an iron mine and his mom was a teacher. Bah had just finished college, having majored in physical education. He wanted to teach, maybe, if hockey didn't work out. He'd been playing hockey since he was a little kid. He loved it.

"Do you think you'll go to the NHL?" she asked.

Bah shrugged. "It'll be unexpected if I do, but it's what everybody wants, right?" Sandy mimicked his shrug, and he grinned. "Well, just trust me."

Sandy dragged a couple of fries through some ketchup as she thought about this. "Why do you think it'll be unexpected?"

"Oh, because I'm not quite good enough. On paper, at least," Bah replied. "What? It's the truth," he added, as she looked up at him, surprised. "I work my ass off and coaches like that, but I'm not out there scoring beautiful goals or anything."

Prior to this, Sandy hadn't even considered that there were better hockey players than Bah. She had barely considered that there were _other_ hockey players than Bah. She shook her head. "I guess I really do need to come watch you play sometime."

Bah let out a short laugh. "Why? Do you want to see how much worse I am than everyone else?" They grinned at each other, and he reached across the table and grabbed one of her fries. "I think I like living in a world where you've never seen me or anybody else play."

Sandy was glad, as they left the restaurant a while later, to see that Bah's order of toast had brought him back from the dead a little bit. When they pulled up to the apartment building, there was someone leaving, hauling a suitcase. Bah leaned forward in the passenger seat, peering at the guy. "Uh oh."

"What?" Sandy didn't recognize the guy, but Bah clearly knew him. He wrestled out of his seat belt and out of the car, jogging to meet the guy as he came down the front walk. Sandy watched from the car as they talked. The other guy seemed to be explaining something, shrugging and talking with his hands, and Bah was shaking his head. Eventually, they both looked over at the car, and Bah gestured for her to come out. Sandy shook her head emphatically. This didn't seem like it was her business. But Bah waved her over again, a little more impatiently, and so Sandy got out of the car.

"... Didn't realize anything was going on today, otherwise I wouldn't have made plans. I'm sorry," Bah was saying as Sandy came walking up.

"I don't think anyone knew," the other guy replied. "Don't feel bad." He turned to Sandy and gave her a weak smile. "I just wanted to meet you before I go," he said, holding out a hand. "I'm Mark Wells."

Sandy shook his hand, remembering Bah mentioning his dog-named roommates and assuming that this was Wellsy. "Sandy. It's nice to meet you," she said.

"He thought it was weird that you were just sitting in the car and watching us," Bah told her.

"Oh," Sandy said.

Mark shook his head. "That isn't true. Bah said he wanted me to meet you today when you guys got back, but—" he raised the hand that was carrying his suitcase. "I'm just on my way out of town."

"Oh," Sandy said again. For the second time that day, there seemed to be something going on that she didn't understand, but this seemed a little more serious. "Where are you going?"

Mark and Bah exchanged a look. "Michigan," Mark said. "Flint. Hopefully just for a while."

"He's—uh—he got sent down," Bah explained. "Herb called him this morning and told him."

"Sent down? Do you mean…" Sandy paused, not sure if "cut" was the polite term for it.

"Yeah," Mark and Bah said in unison, both having read her mind.

"Oh no, I'm sorry," Sandy said, and she felt it. Again, she was very aware of how much this wasn't her business. "Will you get to come back?"

There was a pause. Bah looked over at Mark, whose face took on a somewhat steely quality. "Yup. Don't worry, you'll see me again."

"Good man," Bah said, reaching out and clapping Mark on the shoulder.

"On the bright side, nobody has to share a bedroom on the apartment anymore," Mark replied with a laugh. "That'll be a nice change of pace for you guys. Anyways, I should probably head out," he continued. "Herbie said they were expecting me at some point today, so I'd better at least make a good impression. It was nice to meet you, Sandy."

"You too," Sandy said, feeling incredibly sad and trying to remind herself that she had just met this person about five minutes ago. "Good luck in Michigan."

"Yeah, keep your chin up," Bah said, holding out a hand for Mark to shake. Mark pulled Bah in and hugged him, and Sandy craned her neck to peer in the direction of her car, trying to hide the fact that she was crying a little.

"Take care, you guys," Mark said, starting to walk down the sidewalk.

"Drive safe," Bah said and Sandy waved, unable to speak around the lump in her throat.

Sandy and Bah sat on the front step of the apartment building and watched as Mark drove off. Bah leaned forward, resting his chin on his fist. "Well, that definitely put a damper on the day, didn't it?"

"Is that really how it works?" Sandy asked. "You just get a call one morning and—poof—you're going to Michigan and there's nothing you can do about it?"

"Pretty much."

Sandy leaned forward too. "That just seems so unfair."

Bah started to answer, but the door behind them opened and two guys came out, each holding two beer bottles. One of them was Bah's other, smaller roommate, Pav. "Thought you guys might still be out here," he said, handing a bottle to Bah. The other guy thrust his spare bottle at Sandy, who reluctantly took it.

"What time did he get back?" Bah asked.

Pav shook his head. "He was gone in the morning, and me and Buzzy went to eat after you guys left and when I got home, he was in the bedroom with the door closed so I just left him. He didn't tell me what happened until he came out with all his stuff."

Bah rested his chin on his palm again and shook his head. "Shit. We just got back _yesterday_. How—"

"You'll drive yourself nuts, Bah," the other guy said, leaning against one of the columns on the porch. "Don't bother trying to figure it out." He poked Sandy in the leg with the toe of his shoe, and she jumped. "Nothing ruins a nice date like having to deal with hockey team drama, isn't that right, baby?"

"She was just saying how unfair it was," Bah said.

The other guy laughed and sipped his beer. "That sounds about right. I'm Dave Silk, by the way," he said. "Nice to meet ya."

"You too," Sandy said. "I just can't believe how sudden that seems. How would you even prepare for it?"

"You wouldn't," Bah said with a shrug. "I try not to think about it because if I did, it'd be _all_ I ever thought about."

Dave Silk sat down on the step next to Sandy. "It's not like we all haven't been cut before," he said. "We all—what are you, scared I put something in there? Have a drink." He cut himself off, bumping his bottle into Sandy's. She took an obliging sip. "Anyway, we all know what it feels like."

"Seems... Not that fun," Sandy said, and the boys laughed.

Pav and Dave stayed outside on the step for a while longer, quietly talking hockey and drinking their beer. Eventually, Pav straightened up and Sandy saw him gesture at Dave to get his attention. "C'mon, let's go in," he said, and the two of them went back into the building.

Sandy and Bah were left sitting alone on the step, Bah absently blowing into his empty bottle. A moment later, Sandy stood up as well, handing her bottle to Bah.

"You heading out?" he asked, setting it down and using one of the columns to pull himself into a standing position.

She nodded. "I had fun today," she said, starting to back up across the lawn towards her car.

Bah followed her. "Me too. I hope all this," he said, gesturing toward where they had been sitting on the step, "didn't depress you too much."

"It didn't." She shook her head. She stopped walking a few feet from her car, and he caught up to her. "Kind of makes me worry for you a little, though."

He frowned. "Why?"

"I would just be really worried about getting comfortable anywhere if I knew there was the possibility of that happening to me."

Bah folded his arms. "Well, I can see why it would bother you, but it's just something I've gotten used to. You just learn to not let it mess with your head—or you do, but you use it to make you play better so it _doesn't_ happen." He shrugged.

She squinted at him in the sunlight. "I feel like that's some kind of disorder."

Bah rolled his eyes theatrically at her. "What are you, a doctor now?"

"Runs in my family. Will's gonna be a doctor, remember? My brother," she supplied, when he looked confused.

"Ah, yes. You come from a medical family."

"You can meet him if you want. Him and Jenny, if you want."

"Tonight?"

"If you want to."

He hesitated. "I'd better not. I think I need to be around the boys tonight. Are they free tomorrow?"

Sandy nodded. "Probably. You should come for dinner—I bet they'll like you." This was half a lie. She had no doubt that _Jenny_ would like Bah, but she wasn't so sure about Will. They were all adults, though. Will would be able to keep it together and meet someone his sister was spending time with, she thought.

"Sure," Bah said. "And yes, I'm very charming, so I think they'd like me, too."

"Just make sure you don't accidentally go out drinking the night before," Sandy said, and let out a little yelp as Bah suddenly reached out, grabbed her by the hand, pulled her close, and kissed her.

When they separated, Bah grinned. "Sorry. Felt like a good moment." He dropped his arms to his sides and took a step back. "Can we go for a run tomorrow before dinner?"

"Okay." Sandy pressed her palms against her warm cheeks and wondered if Bah would ever stop having this effect on her.

He continued to smile at her as he started backing up towards the building. "Great. I'll call you."

Sandy pulled herself together enough to get into the car. She thought of something suddenly as she started to leave, and quickly rolled down her window and called to Bah, who was walking back across the lawn. He turned. "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure," he said.

Now that he was standing there, looking at her expectantly, she felt ridiculous and selfish for asking, but she did, quickly before she lost her nerve. "Would you call me if it ever happened to you?"

He looked confused. "What? You mean, if I got sent down?"

"Yeah."

Bah took a step in the direction of the car and then stopped, seeming to determine that this wasn't meant to be a long conversation. "Sandy," he said, "of course. _Of course_ I would call you."

Sandy smiled. She could see on his face, even from at a distance, that he looked completely incredulous that she would even have to ask. "Okay," she said. "Sorry. I just don't want to wake up some morning and find that you got shipped off to Flint, too."

"Oh, no," Bah said, laughing a little. "I don't think you're getting rid of me that easily."

"I hope not."


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8 - September 27**

Will looked more uncomfortable with the idea of Bah coming for dinner than Sandy had anticipated. She sat at the dining room table with him and Jenny, watching as Will apparently struggled to come to terms with the idea of someone coming into his home to eat a meal with them. "And so this—this _Bob_ guy, he's—"

"It's Bah," Jenny cut him off. She found the whole thing wonderful, especially when Sandy told her that Bah was the guy they had seen at the track at the end of August. "He'll be offended if you get his name wrong, Will."

Will gave her an exasperated look. "Well, sorry. This is the first I'm hearing of this guy. I just wish you'd told us before you decided to invite him over, you know?"

Sandy rolled her eyes. "We just made the plans yesterday. It really doesn't have to be a big deal. We can help you cook, Jenny," she added, and then, remembering what this meant for Jenny, corrected herself. "I mean, _actually_ help you. If you want."

"You don't need to," Jenny said, waving a dismissive hand at her. "It's already basically done and in the oven already." She whacked Will on the arm. "Don't be such a spoilsport. You'll be able to use studying as an excuse to sneak away as soon as you decide you hate him," she said, winking at Sandy.

"Seems like he already has," Sandy said.

Will looked from Jenny to Sandy and sighed. "I don't really _like_ being ganged up on," he said.

Jenny reached for his hand and clasped it between hers. "You're outnumbered, honey. Better get used to it."

Sandy excused herself a moment later to wait on the front steps for Bah to pick her up, and after a moment she heard Will and Jenny talking through the open window.

"You said you wanted her to make friends, Will. You don't have any control over what kinds of friends she ends up with."

"I know what I said. I just didn't think it would be _this_ kind of friend so soon. You need to just give me a minute to get used to the idea, Jay. She was a little kid the last time I lived in the same house as her."

"Well, she's twenty now, so hurry up and get used to it. I already told you that we aren't going to be people who try to tell her who she can or can't spend time with."

"I'm not—"

Jenny cut him off. "When you dig your heels in when she tells us she's bringing someone home for dinner, that's what it looks like. You said you weren't going to let what your mom said make a difference in how you treat her."

Sandy stood up straighter, wondering what their mother could have possibly told him.

"That's not fair. I'm just trying to make sure she's okay. And anyway—"

Bah pulled up at that moment, honking his horn despite clearly seeing Sandy sitting there, and Will and Jenny stopped talking. Sandy stood and started walking towards the car, but Bah got out, opening the back door and reaching for something on the seat.

"What are you doing?"

"Do you mind if we go in now?" Bah straightened up and came around the car, holding a bouquet of flowers and a bottle of wine. He was wearing a button down shirt and dressy pants, looking a little more formal than Sandy in her shorts and t-shirt and definitely not dressed for the run they had planned. "I brought this stuff for your sister in law," he said.

"Well, she's about three months pregnant, so I don't know how well the wine will go over."

"Oh. That's right—you told me that." Bah paused and handed the bottle to Sandy. " _That's_ for you," he said, and then shook the flowers. "And _these_ can be for her. I didn't know what to bring for your brother."

"He'd probably think you were trying to butter him up."

"Well, he'd be right."

As they walked towards the house, Bah was looking down, picking at the flowers, but Sandy could see through the open living room window that Jenny and Will were scrambling around, trying to tidy up. They clearly weren't expecting them so early. "What happened to going for a run before dinner?"

"I drove by there on my way to pick you up," he said, "and there are a bunch of kids there right now. High school girls—must be training for something." He gave her a sideways look as they went up the front steps. "I—they were yelling at me to come join them, so I just got out of there."

Sandy laughed. "Oh, were they harassing you?"

"Kind of," Bah said, grinning sheepishly. "I barely even slowed down turning around in the parking lot but they still noticed me. So I figured we'd better wait until they were gone."

She continued to laugh at him. "I can't believe you're so desirable that people just yell at you while you're driving by in your car. Maybe you weren't kidding about landing a Swedish supermodel."

Bah rolled his eyes. "We're talking about probably sixteen year old girls."

"I bet they could tell just by looking at you that you're older and more sophisticated," Sandy said, straightening the collar on Bah's shirt. "You look very nice, by the way."

He grinned and puffed his chest out. "Thanks. You do too, but more in an 'I just participated in a track and field day' sort of way."

"Well, that was kind of the plan before someone got shy," she said and turned back to the door. She paused, her hand on the doorknob. "Are you ready?"

Bah ran a hand through his hair and shook it around, bouncing on his toes. "Let's do it."

When Sandy pushed the front door open, she jumped. Will and Jenny were standing in the living room, side by side, like they were posing for a portrait. "Guys— _Jesus_ ," Sandy said. Next to her, Bah let out a choked laugh.

Will and Jenny started moving in unison, Jenny moving forward and Will taking three steps backward. "Sorry," Jenny said, grasping Bah's hand. "We don't know what we're doing. I'm Jenny."

"Hey, me either," Bah said, handing her the flowers with his other hand. "I'm John—or Bah, whichever you've been told about. These are for you. I brought wine, too, but I didn't know you couldn't drink it." He pointed at the bottle in Sandy's arms.

Jenny dismissed this with a shake of her head. "These two'll take care of it. Couple of lushes," she said, speaking out of the corner of her mouth.

Jenny lead Bah into the kitchen, and Sandy followed, letting Will, who was suddenly a sommelier, take the bottle out of her hand to inspect it.

"Sorry if it's a little messy in here," Jenny told Bah, gesturing around her spotless kitchen.

"Yeah, we weren't expecting you guys here for a while." Will spoke flatly, setting the wine bottle on the kitchen table with a _thud._

" _Hey,_ " Sandy hissed at him. "We can't go to the track right now; there's people there," she said.

Jenny narrowed her eyes at Will. "It's not a problem. Didn't you say you had studying to do before we ate?"

Will, who always had studying to do in some form or another, scuttled from the room.

"Don't mind him," Jenny said to Bah, flapping her hands at him to make him join Sandy at the kitchen table. "He's just trying to make up for missing an entire lifetime of being an overprotective brother."

Bah sank down in a chair. "He'll come around." He winked at Sandy.

Jenny brought out two glasses and set them on the table. "You two can help me," she said.

Sandy poured them each a glass of wine and grinned at Bah. "You'll like this. She's taught me a lot about cooking."

While Jenny chopped up vegetables in the kitchen, she chatted with Bah about himself, about the hockey team, and about the Olympics, and Sandy felt very grateful for her. After a while, Will came lurking out into the kitchen, grabbed a glass for himself, and sat at the table with them, continuing to act very sullen. Sandy was mystified. She supposed Jenny was right, Will was probably trying to make up for all the years when he _hadn't_ been protective of Sandy, but he seemed a little like someone trying on clothes that didn't quite fit.

"So Will," Bah said, trying his luck. "Sandy said you were in med school?"

Will nodded at him over the top of his glass. "I'm in my second year. What did you major in when you were in college?"

"Phys Ed. I figured it would be easier to coach or teach when I'm done hockey if I have a background in education, and my mom teaches so I have a pretty good idea of how it works."

Jenny perked up, dumping some carrots into a pot. "Ooh, so you think maybe you'll end up in a school?"

Bah shrugged. "Maybe. That's a ways down the road, though—I can't exactly hold down a career while I'm playing hockey."

"So, at what point did you decide that hockey was more important than a job?" Will spoke with a conversational tone, but everyone turned to look at him.

" _Hey—_ " Sandy said again, but Bah cut her off.

"Oh no, it's not more important than a job, but I guess I just consider it to be my job right now."

"Do they _pay_ you?" Jenny asked, curious in spite of Will's rudeness. Bah turned back to look at her, and Sandy took the opportunity to frown at Will, who shrugged.

"Yeah, they do. A little bit. Not as much as they get in the NHL or anything, but enough to live on." He turned to Will and tried again. "So, what kind of medicine do you think you want to get into?"

It seemed that Will would have been content to just sit and grumpily drink Bah's wine. He looked taken aback by the fact that Bah was still trying to speak to him. "I don't know yet," he said. "Anaesthetics, maybe. I don't have to decide on a specialty for a while."

Bah hummed, interested. "So that's, what, putting people under before surgeries?"

Will nodded. "Something like that."

"So what interests you about it?" Bah asked.

Will took another sip of wine, considering this. Sandy could see the dilemma on her brother's face. The self-absorbed part of his personality was probably begging to be indulged, to be allowed to talk very impressively about medicine school-related things. But at the same time, doing this would crack the steely front that Will was trying so hard to project. Sandy and Jenny grinned at each other.

It took Will another moment to reply while he worked all of this out. Eventually he said, "we haven't spent a lot of time in hospitals yet, but do you know what I hear the most when I'm there?"

"People probably want to know if whatever they're having done will hurt," Bah said.

Will looked a little annoyed that Bah had answered his question correctly. "Well, yeah," he said. "It's hard to help people who are scared of what you're trying to do to help."

Bah leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. "I've never thought about that before. And it's not as involved as a GP, right? The only times I've ever seen anesthesiologists, they weren't around for long."

"Yeah." Will shrugged. "I thought about doing something like pediatrics, but with this I'll probably have a little more time for these guys," he said, waving a hand at Jenny in the kitchen.

She snorted. "That's nice."

Will probably thought that he was done once he was able to stop talking, but Bah continued to steer the conversation back to him. Bah grilled Will on his decision to move to Minnesota for med school and whether he was planning on staying there once he started working, about what his other interests were and how much spare time a med student actually _had._ Jenny put the pot of vegetables on the stovetop, filled a wine glass with orange juice, and joined them at the table.

Bah appeared to have exhausted his line of questioning, but his efforts seemed to have paid off a little. "So, how many cuts are there left to be made?" Will asked when Bah had fallen silent for a few moments.

"Well, right now we're at twenty-four guys. It needs to be down to twenty by February, so technically there are four."

Jenny frowned. "Why 'technically?'"

"It's not really as straightforward as just cutting four people and that's it," Bah said, shrugging. "We figure Herb—our coach—will bring guys in while we're playing exhibition games to try them out."

"Is he allowed to do that?" Sandy asked.

"Sure," Bah said. "He can do pretty well whatever he wants, because he's trying to put together a hockey team, so..." He shrugged again. "It doesn't hurt to be prepared for anything."

Will took a sip of his wine. "So, say you make the team and you go to the Olympics and everything. What happens after that?"

"Not sure. I'm not with an NHL team and so I don't know if I'd be picked up for the rest of the season, so I guess it'll depend on how I do at the Olympics." He grinned. "Lots of people watch that, you know."

"So you're not—" Will, who knew as much about hockey as Sandy did, struggled to phrase his question. "You're not even sure what you're doing once this is all done?"

"Well," Bah said, glancing at Sandy, "no, I guess I don't. But it probably seems worse to you guys because you're not—you know, familiar with the whole thing. Something will come up."

Will made a kind of grunting sound and polished off his wine. Jenny and Sandy stared at him. "We don't know anything about it," Sandy told Will. "Maybe let's not worry about it so much."

Will blinked and turned to look at Sandy. "I'm not worrying about it," he said. His gaze moved over to Bah, who looked somewhat amused. "I'm not trying to be aggressive or anything. I'm just..." Will let his sentence trail off, apparently just then aware of how he was behaving.

Bah shook his head. "No, I get it," he said. "I have sisters, too. This is pretty low key compared to what I was expecting." He grinned over at Sandy and then returned his attention back to Will. "Anyway, do you know what I've always wondered about med school?..."

The conversation was successfully diverted away from Bah's vagabond hockey player lifestyle and Will sat all through dinner looking like a toddler with slapped hands. Sandy hoped he felt terrible. She understood what he was trying to do, but she hadn't needed Will to be a guard dog before then. Why did he seem to think she needed one now?

To Bah's credit, Sandy thought, he had handled everything very well. He'd picked up on Will's propensity for talking about himself and tried to take advantage of it. He had no problem getting along with Jenny, who appeared to find Bah fascinating, trying to get him talking about the process and about hockey.

Bah didn't mention the pre-dinner awkwardness at all as they drove in his car to the track, which was thankfully deserted. Sandy got out of the car to keep an eye out for passersby while Bah wrestled himself out of his dinner clothes and into sweats and a t-shirt. When he climbed out of the car, Sandy was sitting on the hood, tying her shoes. "So?" he said, leaning against the car next to her.

"So?"

Bah shrugged. "How do you figure that went?"

"Better than I was expecting, but that's only thanks to Jenny and you being such a good sport. I'm sorry about Will. I didn't know he'd be like that."

"Oh, I figured he would be. You're his little sister, you have to expect some of that kind of thing. He seemed like he was trying hard not to like me, though, right?" He elbowed Sandy gently in the leg.

She surprised herself by reaching out and grabbing his hand. "Probably. I don't want you to worry about making him like you. You worked so hard at it tonight."

He hummed thoughtfully. "I'm not worried about that. You don't seem to really take his opinion into account, and I only really care about what you think. Besides," he said, pushing off of the car and tugging Sandy by the hand onto the ground. "I can confidently tell you that your brother is not the kind of guy who would ever try to fight me for your honour or anything, so we don't have to worry about that."

Sandy laughed. "I could have told you that."

They didn't run for long, as both of them were weighed down by the meal and glasses of wine they'd consumed at the house, but when Bah dropped Sandy off later, the windows of the house were dark. Sandy went inside, and stopped at the sight of Will sitting alone at the kitchen table. "Where's Jenny?"

"She went to bed," Will said. He paused, considering. "Well, that's not completely true. She kind of gave me hell after you guys left. Come sit with me for a sec, okay?"

Sandy pulled out a chair and sat across from Will. He seemed to be revving himself up to say something. He tapped his fingers on the table, staring at a spot just to the right of Sandy's face.

"I want to apologize," he said.

"Oh," Sandy said. "What for?"

Will shrugged. "For how I was acting tonight. You brought Bah here because you wanted him to meet us and I wasn't really the nicest I could have been. So, I'm sorry."

"It's all right. You got better as the night went on," she said. "I was worried to begin with."

"Yeah," Will said, staring again at the spot next to Sandy's head. "Can I ask you kind of a weird question?" He barely paused for Sandy to nod. "Do you remember falling into a pool when you were a little kid?"

Sandy frowned. "No, should I?"

He shook his head. "You were probably too young, I guess. I was only about nine, so you were just a toddler. Mom took us to one of her friends' houses for whatever reason—I can't really remember why I had to go—but this lady had a pool in her backyard. And I remember it being really hot outside, so Mom's friend told us to go out back to play with her dog and put our feet in the pool while they visited."

"Okay," Sandy said, confused as to where this was going.

"Mom told me to watch you and I was annoyed, because I was more excited to play fetch with this dog. So I made sure you were a good distance away from the pool and just... Sort of forgot about you. You don't remember this at all?"

Sandy shook her head. "No, not at all."

Will leaned forward and rested his chin on his palm. "Probably a good thing. You crawled right over to the edge of the pool and I just remember hearing the splash as you went in." He paused and shook his head. "You weren't in there for more than a few seconds—I jumped in and got you out right away—but I thought Mom was going to murder me."

There was a long silence as Sandy considered this story and what it meant.

"She told me that I had to be a better brother. Even then, she told me that. But I think you and I both know that I haven't really been the greatest in that department."

Sandy didn't say anything. She wondered what she was _supposed_ to say. In the end, she just continued to look across the table at Will, who was again looking like he was struggling to speak.

"I called Mom and Dad last week. We talked about—well, about everything."

"Oh."

"I'm sorry you couldn't tell me about it," he said.

Sandy shrugged. "It's okay. I don't know if there's anything you could have done. You've already done a lot. You and Jenny."

Will ran his hands through his hair, suddenly agitated. "I know—I just feel like I've making excuses for why I'm a shit sibling for our entire lives and—"

"You're not a—"

"No, I am," Will cut her off. "I am. Or, at least, I have been. I'm trying to be better, because I get it now. You and Mom and Dad aren't going to suddenly start getting along again, and I don't fault you for that. And I can be there for you now that you're here. But at the same time, I can't cut them out of my kid's life, you know?"

Sandy nodded. "Of _course_ , Will. I would never say you need to do that. You had a completely different experience with them. What happened to me doesn't make that any less important."

"I just wouldn't want you to feel like you weren't welcome here when they come out," Will said, "because it's your home too now, and having you here has been really great."

"Right." Sandy had been worrying about her parents' impending visit. They were due to show up during the last week of October. Di had said Sandy could spend the week at her place, but it seemed inevitable that she would run into her parents at some point. "It's not going to be a problem. At least, I'm not going to make it into one."

Will nodded. "I know. After hearing what I've heard, it's not you causing issues that I'm worried about."

She shook her head. "I'll find somewhere to stay and you guys can just have a nice visit. And for the record, Will, you _are_ a good brother. You don't have to be the tough, overprotective guy to prove that. I know it's probably hard sometimes, but you just have to trust that I know what I'm doing."

"I don't have a problem with that. You're more competent than you think," Will said.

She smiled at him. "Maybe we both are."

They talked for a bit longer, and then Will got up to go to bed. He lingered for a second, struggling again. "What?" Sandy asked.

"He's a good guy," Will said after a moment. "Bah. I hope you bring him around again."


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9 - October 5 - 6, 1979**

"To be clear—do I really have a choice on this?" Sandy asked.

Di, who had appeared at the door dressed to the nines a moment earlier, clasped her hands together and stuck out her bottom lip, shaking her head. "Come on. I think we'll have a lot of fun. You can borrow one of my dresses if you don't have anything to wear."

"Did you know that you were going to have to ask me to come with you before today?"

" _No_ ," Di said, shaking her head again. "I _had_ a date, but he fell off a horse and broke his collarbone two days ago and just told me this morning that he didn't think he'd be much fun. I'm very mad at him. C'mon, they have a plate of food for my guest and everything. We can make fun of all my hillbilly relatives," she said, as if this were a tantalizing bit of bribery, and then leaned in and added in a whisper, " _and_ there's an open bar and Beth said she'd get us drinks all night."

Sandy sighed and looked back over her shoulder at Will, who was sitting at the kitchen table, watching them talk. She tried to telepathically tell him to give her an excuse to not go with Di to her cousin's wedding that afternoon, but he stared blankly back at her, apparently not having received the message. In the end, Sandy turned back to Di and sighed again. "What time is the ceremony?"

Di squealed and clapped her hands together. "It's in two hours, but don't you worry about any of it. Get your purse and everything and we'll go get ready at my place."

Sandy grabbed her purse, which was hanging from the coat rack near the door and turned back to Will. "I guess I'm going to a wedding today." She paused on the way out to grab a pair of Jenny's black high heels from near the door, grateful that their feet were the same size.

"Have fun," Will said.

"I'll have her back at a reasonable hour," Di called over her shoulder as the door closed.

Sandy had never been inside Di's house before. They had always either gone out or spent time at Sandy's place, and so she had never met either of Di's parents or her mysterious and adventurous sister, Beth. None of them were there when they got to the house, though, which was in an affluent area called Edina. "Beth's in the wedding party, and so she's been out all day, and my parents are both already with everybody at the club." Di explained. "I didn't feel like going there by myself, so I said I'd just show up for the ceremony. I guess they told everyone that I'm working today."

"Why are they having a wedding on a Friday afternoon, anyway?" Sandy asked. "Isn't that kind of weird? Won't everyone be working?"

Di nodded. "Did you know that it's a lot cheaper—and a little less classy—to get married during the week?" She yanked her closet door open, revealing an impressive collection of different clothes. "So, obviously we want something that won't be too long for you because you're shorter than me, so any of these long ones are out." She studied the mass of fabric for a moment and then pulled out six hangers. "Go try those on."

In the end, Di deemed a dark red belted dress acceptable, and after she was dressed, Sandy sat on the edge of the bed while Di fussed around with curling and styling her hair. "So where's Bah right now?" she asked, shaking a bottle of hairspray and covering Sandy's eyes while she sprayed.

Sandy tried to remember what Bah had written on the handwritten schedule that he'd dropped off at the house the day before he'd left. "They're in DC tonight. He said they'd be back next week on Tuesday." The Tuesday that Bah was returning was the day before Sandy's birthday, but she didn't mention this.

"Mmm," Di said, spraying Sandy's hair again and then, as an afterthought, spraying her own a bit in the back. "Okay, I think we're ready."

The drive to the University Club of St. Paul, where the wedding was taking place, should have taken them about twenty minutes since it was in, obviously, St. Paul. Di seemed to take a purposely long route to get there, though, turning and driving around full blocks and parking a good distance away from the venue. When Sandy mentioned this, Di grinned at her. "Oh, I don't want to spend any more time celebrating my cousin and and her _big day_ than I absolutely have to." She glanced at her watch. "My mom said I wasn't allowed to be _late_ , but she said nothing about being very close to the start of the ceremony."

"Oh," Sandy said. "Do we not like your cousin? Why are you even going?"

"Well, she only invited me to not start a fight in the family, but she's—" Di paused to wave and smile at someone getting out of a car nearby. She gripped Sandy by her elbow and steered her away from this person. "The guy she's marrying happens to be the guy I dated for most of high school," she said in a low voice as they neared the doors of the building. It looked a little like a manor house in a scary movie, with a circular driveway and ivy creeping up the face of it. "It was not a happy breakup. Things are a little tense."

Sandy stopped walking. "Really? Di, we do _not_ have to go to this thing if it's not—"

"Of course we do," Di said, shaking her head. "She _wants_ me to not show up. Him, too. He's no better than she is—worse, actually." She dismissed this thought with a wave of her hand like she was swatting away a fly. "But I'm— _we're_ going to take in her tacky ceremony, eat their dinner, and then drink their booze because my dad said I could tonight as long as we take a cab home. They're going to get their money's worth out of the mistake of inviting me to this mess," she said, shaking both of her fists at Sandy.

Sandy wasn't sure if she enjoyed the idea of attending a wedding out of spite, but she trusted that Di knew what she was doing. "Okay," she said. "But just remember that I won't mind if you want to leave at any point."

Di laughed a somewhat maniacal laugh. "Oh, don't worry. I didn't forget that you're my hostage here."

The usher lead them to seats in the second row, which Sandy thought was a little bit cruel of Di's cousin, whose name turned out to be Olive. The ceremony itself wasn't necessarily tacky. If it had been anyone else getting married, Sandy would have thought it was kind of sweet, but she didn't take her life into her hands by saying this to Di. Once it was over, Di and Sandy shuffled off to the side, trying to stay out of the way. Sandy noticed, as a few of Di's relatives came up to say hello, that the general theme of their greetings was, "oh—good for you." She was impressed with how Di took it all in stride.

"You know me—I'd never miss a chance to come to a wedding," she said, over and over.

They hung around for a little while and eventually wandered off to a nearby cafe, opting to skip cocktail hour. Di picked at a muffin, looking morose, while Sandy watched her over a cup of steaming coffee. "Do you want to get out of here and go see a movie or something?"

Di looked up and shook her head. "No. We can't leave now that everybody saw us. We have to make it seem like this is just any other day. _I_ do." She pushed the muffin across the table at Sandy. "Take some of that before I eat the whole thing. I'm so _hungry_."

Sandy pinched off a chunk of the muffin and put it on a napkin. "Why do you care if everybody saw us?"

Di laughed. "You're lucky in that you don't care what your family thinks about you. I mean—" She sighed, as Sandy raised her eyebrows. "You know what I mean. Sorry. I think I'm looking forward to the feeling of superiority that will come from saying that I stuck around for the _entire_ day, even though it would have been perfectly fine if I didn't even show up."

Sandy nodded. "I get it. It just seems like it's making you miserable to be here."

"Oh, it definitely is," Di said, rolling her eyes. "But they aren't going to be able to say I'm being a baby about all of this. They can say I'm not as pretty as Beth and that it's a shame I'm not living up to my potential, because that's all true, but they can't say I couldn't show my face at this stupid wedding." Di's voice was getting louder and louder as she spoke, and people at nearby tables were glancing in their direction.

When Di finished talking, Sandy pushed the muffin back across the table at her. "I think you're brave," she said. "And I think living up to your potential is overrated. You don't do anything people expect you to do, Di, and that's why you're great. And as far as I can see, you're better off without that guy. Did he have that hairline when you were with him? He won't have any hair left in three years."

"Mmm," Di said, her head bobbing up to look at Sandy. She took a bite of the muffin and smiled. "I told him so many times when we were together that it didn't look good to slick his hair back like he does. I hope it falls out in clumps." She sighed. "It was really nice of you to come today. I don't think I would have been able to do this without you—I should have probably just asked you to come to begin with and not stupid, flaky Eric."

"I thought you said he broke his collarbone," Sandy said.

Di batted this minor detail away. "If he really wanted to come, he would have made it work." The two of them laughed.

As they walked back to the club for the beginning of the reception, Di stopped at the car to get her gift out of the trunk, which she had wrapped in plain, brown paper.

"What did you get them?" Sandy asked.

Di gave the box a little shake, and something inside rattled around. "Olive and Roger got together a week before I graduated, and she came to my party and brought this awful punch bowl set. It's shaped like a goose, Sandy," she said. "It's terrible. _I_ didn't want it."

Sandy grinned. "You didn't."

"Well, it's wrapped so by the time she sees it, I'll be long gone. But I figured—if she likes to help herself to my things, I should at least get to pick the things she takes."

"Seems logical," Sandy said, holding the door open for Di. "I'm sure they'll both just love it."

Di giggled. "And if I ever get married, they won't be invited so she won't be able to give it back."

The table that had a name card for "Diane Richards and Guest" was tucked away in a back corner of the high-ceilinged room where the reception was being held. Sandy assumed that this was somehow meant to be a slight to Di, but Di looked a lot happier to be out of the way, eating her salmon dinner at a table with some of Roger's work friends. As a band started to play and couples started to filter onto the dance floor, Di kept checking her watch.

"Any time you're ready to go, Di," Sandy reminded her.

It looked for a moment as if Di was going to decide to leave early, but her sister suddenly appeared at the table, her tall, good-looking date in tow and carrying a tall, fruity-coloured drink. She looked a lot like Di, with the same long legs and red hair. Her date's tie was slightly askew. "I'm Beth," she said to Sandy, leaning across the table, her hand outstretched.

"Sandy," she said, trying to be heard over the music. "Nice to meet you."

Beth nodded and jerked her thumb at her date. "This is Brad," she said. "He was lucky enough to be asked to come tonight. Right, babe?" She elbowed Brad, who clearly had not been listening.

"Huh? Yeah, you bet," he said, and turned his attention back to the dance floor.

Grinning, Beth waved a dismissive hand at him. "He's boring. Anyway, how are you holding up, sweetheart?" She reached over and handed her drink to Di. As Di took the straw out of the glass and tipped it, Beth turned back to Sandy. "Did she tell you the whole sordid story?"

Sandy nodded. "She did. Are you not close with your cousin, either?"

Beth and Di scoffed simultaneously. "Of course not. Olive asked me to be in the wedding party because of something dumb related to revenge," Beth said, shrugging. "Your guess is as good as mine, but I didn't want to cause a civil war in my family over a wedding. Besides, we get to run up their liquor bill tonight, right ladies?" She looked expectantly over at Sandy and Di. They both nodded, Sandy somewhat less enthusiastically than Di. "Great. I'll be right back," she said. Beth got to her feet and walked toward the bar, returning with four shot glasses balancing in her hands. She placed them on the table and gestured for them all to drink.

"Hang on." Di was suddenly digging around in her purse. She fished her keys out and handed them to Sandy. "You should probably hang on to these to make sure I don't sneak away and drive."

Sandy took the keys and zipped them up in her own purse. She wanted to say that maybe getting belligerently drunk wasn't the best plan for Di, who seemed to be worried about what everyone in her family would say. The moment to mention this quickly passed as Di threw back her shot and then took Sandy's and drank it, too.

Within a half an hour, Di and Beth had gotten up and had made their way out to the dance floor, leaving Sandy sitting at the table with Brad. He didn't seem to mind, appearing to be content just watching everyone else dance. After a while, he turned and looked at Sandy as if he'd just noticed her sitting there. "How do you know Beth?" he asked, shouting a little over the music.

"I don't," Sandy said. "I'm just friends with her sister. What about you?"

"From the U. She'd come to my hockey games there."

"You play hockey at the U?" Sandy asked, and he nodded. "I think I know some guys who play with you."

"Oh?" Brad raised his eyebrows. "Who's that?"

Sandy realized a moment after speaking that she had no idea what team any of the players she had met played for. "Maybe they don't play here," she said, trying to remember a name. "Baker? Is that one?" She vaguely recalled meeting a guy with a shock of blond hair by that name at the party at the apartment building before the boys went to Europe.

Brad, who had been craning his neck around to speak to her, seemingly not wanting to commit fully to having a conversation, turned himself to face Sandy. "Billy Baker? How do you know _him?_ " he asked.

"I don't," she said again, feeling sort of stupid. "I was at a party he was at because I'm—uh…" She paused, unsure how, exactly, to quantify her relationship with Bah. "... Seeing one of the guys he plays with on the Olympic team."

"No shit," said Brad. "Who's _that?_ "

"John Harrington? Bah?"

Brad slapped his hand on the table. "You're kidding. I know Bah! I've been playing against him since high school hockey," he said. "How did you get to know him? Are you a hockey fan too?"

Sandy didn't see the point in explaining the whole thing to Brad, and so she nodded. "Kind of."

Beth and Di came dancing up, both holding new drinks. "Are you sure you guys don't want to come dance?" Di asked. Her cheeks were very flushed and she looked like she was having the time of her life.

"Can't with this ankle," Brad said, gesturing at it. "I hurt it at the end of this past season," he added to Sandy. "Otherwise I would have tried out for the Olympic team, too."

Beth sank down into Brad's lap, looping her arm around his back. "Brad's quite the hockey player," she said.

Di pulled out a chair and sat down next to Sandy. "You're a hockey player? Sandy knows hockey players." She placed a hand on the table, looking like she was steadying herself. "Remember I was telling you about Sandy, Beth?"

"We established that," Brad said. "She said she's going out with a guy I kind of know."

"We're not going out," Sandy said, although she didn't think anyone cared. "We're just—"

"Sleeping together?" Beth cut her off loudly, and she and Brad laughed together at this hilarious joke. People sitting at the table next to them turned and looked at them.

Di turned to Sandy and shook her head. "You're not, right? You would have told me if you were."

Sandy took Di's drink out of her hands and sipped it. "Not that it matters, but no."

"Ahh," Beth said, waving a hand at her. "What's the point, then? Free meals out?"

"I didn't know there had to be a point," Sandy said.

Brad grinned at her. "Oh, I bet if you asked him, there would definitely be a _point._ "

Di snatched her drink back, spilling some onto Sandy's borrowed dress. "You should see him, Beth. He's got these _beautiful_ eyes. She's so lucky," she said, sloppily putting an arm around Sandy's shoulders. "And he's so nice to her."

"Oh, I bet," Beth said, waggling her eyebrows at Sandy. "Gorgeous girl like you. Poor guy's probably wondering what he's doing wrong."

Sandy stopped responding to their comments about Bah, and eventually they just stopped talking about it. Beth got up and brought everyone more drinks, and Sandy tried to keep tabs on how much Di was taking in. No one else seemed to be worried about it. Some time later, Di excused herself to go to the washroom but had a hard time walking a linear path, so Sandy followed closely behind.

When they reached the building's main foyer, Di suddenly spun around to look at Sandy, a desperate expression on her face.

"What?" Sandy said, startled. "Are you gonna be—"

Di interrupted her by turning to a nearby potted plant and vomiting into it.

"Oh, good." Sandy dug in her purse for a hair tie and handed it to Di, who pulled her hair back into a crooked ponytail. "Is it time to go home?"

"I think so," Di said. "Can you go back in and grab my things? I just need to go freshen up."

Di continued to look unsteady next to the potted plant, but Sandy hurried back into the reception anyway. Brad and Beth were no longer at the table, Beth having coaxed Brad and his bad ankle out onto the dance floor. Sandy quickly made her way out to them. "Di just threw up," she said, and Beth craned her neck in Sandy's direction, trying to hear. "She wants to go home."

"Okay," Beth said. "It was nice to meet you. And I'd better hear the next time Di mentions you that you're screwing Bob."

"Bah," Sandy and Brad said at the same time.

Leaving the two of them to their dancing, Sandy hurried back out towards the entrance. She called for a cab to come pick Di and herself up, and the two of them waited outside for it to show up. Di leaned against the wall, resting her forehead in her hand.

"You okay?" Sandy asked.

Di shook her head. "Tired. Do you ever just get _so_ tired?"

The door behind them opened, and Sandy heard the sound of scuffling feet. She turned, seeing Roger, the groom, standing there with a cigarette in his mouth. He put a finger to his lips and started to back up toward the door. Sandy kept perfectly still, hoping not to draw Di's attention behind them, but, of course, she glanced back over her shoulder and spotted Roger as he was opening the door.

" _Oh_ ," Di said. Sandy thought maybe this would be all—Di was, after all, very tired—but a moment later she said, in a loud voice that made Roger jump, "look who it is, Sandy! The happy groom, on his wedding night. Still smoking, huh?"

Roger pulled the cigarette out of his mouth and tucked it away behind his ear. "C'mon, Di, don't be like this—"

"I've been _great_ all day long, you _rat_! Don't tell me how to be!"

A cab pulled into the circular driveway of the club just then, and Sandy thought it must have been sent directly from some divine entity. She grabbed Di's arm. "Hey—why don't we get in the car, Di, huh?"

Di allowed herself to be pulled toward the cab, but continued to shout insults at Roger, who was somehow still standing there, as she did.

Sandy managed to tug Di down into the cab, but not before she wished Roger's receding hairline on all of his and Olive's future children. Sandy pulled the door shut and Di tipped sideways against the other side of the car, suddenly exhausted again.

"Is she gonna throw up?" The cab driver turned around in his seat to look at Di. "I can't take you ladies anywhere if she's going to make a mess In my car."

"Di, do you feel like you might be sick again?" Sandy asked, reaching around her friend to pull her seatbelt on.

Di shook her head. "I feel _wonderful_."

Sandy didn't doubt this. "She'll be fine," she told the driver. ""You should probably drop her off first just to be safe, though. Di, what's your address?"

Di said nothing and flopped over onto her side, resting her head in Sandy's lap. She wouldn't answer the question and Sandy couldn't remember how to get back to Di's house, and so in the end Sandy gave the driver her own address and promised to let him know if it seemed like Di wasn't feeling well.

The cab was silent for a few minutes as they drove, and after a while Di lifted her head off of Sandy's lap and looked around. "Are we going home?"

Sandy nodded. "We're going back to my house."

Di smiled sleepily. "That's nice. A slumber party. Did you have fun tonight? I'm sorry I spent the whole time dancing with Beth and left you alone with boring Brad." She laid her head down again and reached her hand out to touch the toe of Sandy's shoe.

"It's okay, Di. I had fun. He wasn't so bad. I'm glad you asked me to come."

"Mmm," Di said. "And I'm sorry Beth asked if you and Bah were having sex. I know you didn't like that."

Sandy saw the driver shift uncomfortably in his seat. "It's okay," she said. "You didn't know she'd ask."

"No, it's just—" Di heaved herself into a sitting position, turning to look over at Sandy. "I shouldn't have told her about you and him _at all_. It's none of her business. And now—now you're mad."

"It's okay, Di," Sandy said again. "I'm not mad, I promise."

"That's good. And I don't think it's weird that you haven't slept with him yet. I really don't. I think it's nice." Di laid down again, her head resting on Sandy's knee.

Sandy patted Di's back, staring out the window as the lights of St. Paul flew past. "Thanks, Di."

"And I don't think that he's not thinking about it just because he hasn't asked. I know you're worried about that now. I bet he's thinking about it a lot. You're too pretty for him to not. You know?"

Sandy hadn't been worried about this, but she wondered, stupidly, if maybe it was true. "Mm-hmm," she said.

Di was silent for a while, and Sandy thought she must have fallen asleep, but as the cab pulled into Burnsville, she said in a mumble that was nonetheless audible in the quiet car, "I would have just _done_ it by now. Those eyes? Are you kidding me...?"

It took Sandy a while to get Di from the cab into the house. She carefully arranged Di with a pillow behind her on the bed so she wouldn't roll onto her back and throw up again, placed a glass of water on the bedside table, and settled down on the couch. And then, even though she knew it was stupid, she lay awake for another hour and thought about Bah.

The next day, after Di had guzzled down two cups of coffee that was close in consistency to tar, Sandy drove her back to St. Paul to pick up her vehicle. When she got home, Bah called from his hotel room in Washington.

"They're giving us a day to go sightseeing around DC, but everybody's so burnt out," he said.

"You sound like you are," Sandy said, sitting on the floor with the phone and leaning against the kitchen cupboards. "How was your game last night?"

Bah grunted. "We lost in overtime. It was a good game, though. That's the closest we've been in a game with one of these NHL teams, so either we're starting to do better or they're finding worse teams for us to play against."

"I'm sure you're just doing better."

"Well, good to hear someone thinks so. Anyway, what have you been up to?"

"I went to a wedding last night with Di. I actually just got back from dropping her off at her car."

"Oh? How was that?"

Sandy smiled. "It got a little dramatic towards the end, but it was fun. Di revealed that she has kind of a soft spot for your eyes."

He made a crowing noise. "Is that so? These old things?"

"Yep. Just remember to keep them in check if she's ever around. I met somebody who knows you, actually," she added, remembering. "Another hockey player—this guy named Brad who plays at the U."

"Doshan?" Bah said. "What was _he_ doing there?"

Sandy shrugged. "He was there with Di's sister. I told him I knew a bunch of guys he played with, but it turned out I don't know where any of you guys are from."

Bah laughed. "Well, I could get you a roster with everyone's teams on it if you want. I didn't realize you'd be out there rubbing elbows with the stars of the Gophers' fourth line while I was gone."

They chatted a little longer while Sandy worked up the nerve to ask Bah the question that had been bothering her while she tried to fall asleep the night before. "Can I ask you something kind of personal?" she finally asked, gritting her teeth.

"Of course."

"Have you ever thought about…" Sandy paused, mortified at herself, putting her hand over her eyes. She sighed heavily. "About sleeping together? You and me?"

In the living room, she heard Will, who had been in there studying, quickly get to his feet and hurry down the hallway to his and Jenny's room. Bah was quiet for a moment before saying, "now, this feels like a trap, but that doesn't seem like something you'd do. So I'm just going to be honest, if that's all right."

"Yeah. Feel free."

Bah cleared his throat, twice. "Well, okay. Honestly, I _have_ thought about it. I _do_ think about it. But I never really got a good sense of what your—uh—position was." He cleared his throat again.

"On you? On that?" Sandy said, her voice a little high pitched.

"Yeah. I mean, just because you're not my girlfriend or anything like that. It's a little more confusing than it normally would be and so I didn't know how to go about asking you about your—you know—your position."

Sandy put her hand back over her eyes and shook her head. She wished he would stop talking about positions. "It's good. Just so you know. It's—I'm very pro-that being the direction we go in."

Bah snorted and then started to laugh. "Well, good. That's great. See, now I know." A long moment passed while neither of them said anything, and then, "why'd you ask?"

"Oh," Sandy said, "it came up in a terrible conversation we had with Di's sister and your buddy."

"God." Bah scoffed. "Now I have to worry about you talking about _that_ while I'm not around?"

She laughed. "No, you really don't. I think I made it really clear that I didn't enjoy it."

"No kidding," Bah said. He was quiet again for a moment before he added, "you know, I miss you. I wish you were here."

"I know. I miss you, too." Sandy leaned her head back against the cupboards and closed her eyes, struck by and a little worried about how much she honestly _did_ miss him.

* * *

 **Apologies to the real Brad Doshan. I'm sure you're a wonderful man and not boring at all.**


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10 - October 10, 1979**

Sandy woke up late on the morning of her twenty-first birthday. Her shift at the grocery store started at 9:30, and normally she liked to give herself at least an hour to get ready and drive over, but when she opened her eyes, the clock on the nightstand taunted her with the short twenty-five minutes she had before she needed to be at the store.

Will knocked on her bedroom door as he walked down the hall and called out, "hey, don't you work this morning?"

Sandy shouted back, "why didn't you wake me up?" But he was gone, leaving her to get dressed in a hurry.

Will was eating toast and reading the newspaper in the kitchen when she came out. "Better not be late," he said, barely looking up.

Sandy took the toast off of his plate as she ran past him to grab her lunch from the fridge. It wasn't until she got into the car that she considered that Will hadn't wished her a happy birthday. He must have known that it was today, Sandy thought as she drove. But, on the other hand, he hadn't been around for Sandy's birthday for a long time. Maybe he really didn't know. Sandy wasn't the type to be demonstrative about celebrating her birthday, anyway, but she thought it would be nice for her own brother to at least remember.

She sprinted into the store with barely any time to spare, which Sandy was glad for when she saw that Mr. Lawson was standing in the office, waiting for her.

"Well, thank God _you_ at least showed up," he said, folding his arms.

Sandy pulled her apron and tied it, trying to catch her breath. "Sorry," she said. "Just running a little late this morning."

"Mmm," he said. "Just what every employer likes to hear." He didn't seem mad, but Sandy wondered why he was there. She had only seen him three times since starting at the store. "But, like I said, it's lucky you're here. You were scheduled to work with Charlotte today, but she called me this morning and said she wasn't feeling too good, so unfortunately you're going to be on your own today, sweetheart."

Sandy frowned. "There's nobody else coming? I'm here by myself all day?"

He shrugged. "Well, I called Diane just now and there was no answer, and I've been trying to get a hold of some of the high school kids I have filling in when you ladies aren't around. I left messages with some of their parents, so maybe you'll have some help later." He reached out and clapped Sandy on her shoulder. "It's Wednesday, hon. Today is the least exciting day of the week. You'll be fine."

Mr. Lawson was mostly right. The store was very quiet for entire morning and so Sandy occupied herself by restocking shelves. Around lunchtime, when Sandy was sitting in the office eating the sandwich she'd packed for herself, the phone on the desk rang and it was Bah, calling from the rink.

"You're all by yourself?" Sandy could barely hear him over the sound of boys talking loudly in the background. "How's that going?"

"It's fine," Sandy said. She _knew_ that Bah knew it was her birthday. She had told him when they were telling each other about themselves on the day they had gone to the amusement park. He had just gotten back from Maine the afternoon before and she hadn't heard from him since, but she figured it made sense that Bah would be calling her at work to wish her a happy birthday. "Not really the day I expected to be having today, though."

"Hmm? How come?" The sound on the other end was suddenly muffled as if Bah was covering the receiver. "Hold on a minute, I said I was _coming—_ look, Sandy, I can't talk long," he said. "Herb penciled us in for practice basically all day today. I was gonna stop in and visit you at the store, but now I don't think I'll have free time until tomorrow—no—maybe the day after that. I don't know—how about I'll call you?"

"Okay," Sandy said, suddenly glum. They hung up, and afterwards, Sandy allowed herself to wallow.

"Everyone forgot my birthday," she said out loud to no one in particular, enjoying the melodrama of it for a moment before taking a bite of her sandwich.

The last half of the day was considerably more hectic than the first.

"My wife and I are _deathly_ allergic to garlic. Do you understand what that means? Do you have any idea? Do you know what would have happened if we'd eaten one of these? Why isn't it clearly marked on the jar?" The man, who had stormed into the store a moment earlier, shook a jar of pickles at Sandy, the label of which featured, in large font, the words, "now with GARLIC!"

Sandy, who had been in the middle of ringing up ten loaves of bread for an elderly woman when this angry man came in, felt a deep flush start to creep up her neck. "I'm sorry for the trouble, sir, but we don't label the things we sell here. We're just—"

The man raised the jar over his head and brought it down, hard, on the bagging station. Sandy realized what he was about to do a moment before he did it and covered her face with one hand, throwing her other arm in front of the old woman nearby, who had done nothing except love bread. The bottom of the jar cracked open, and pickle juice started to leak out onto the counter. Satisfied with a job well done, the man turned on his heel and stomped out of the store.

The bread woman, who had been quiet up until that moment, suddenly shrieked, "careful it doesn't soak into my bread, dear!" and Sandy jumped.

Sandy was just finishing cleaning the mess up when a trio of high school aged kids came in. She eyed them carefully, aware of how deeply she smelled like pickle juice. She had been told by Di to keep an eye on teenagers who came in in groups, because they were more likely to steal things, and so Sandy casually walked past the aisle where they were and saw two of the boys shoving cans of soda into the girl's purse. Everyone froze, and Sandy, who hadn't imagined that she would actually catch them _this_ red-handed, sighed.

"Please put those back," she said.

"We're gonna pay," one of the boys said. "We were just keeping them in here because we don't have a cart."

"Yeah, what are you gonna do, call the cops?" the other boy sneered at her.

It occurred to Sandy that he was right—the next course of action would be to call the police, which she had never had to do and wanted to avoid. She shrugged. "I guess I could. I just caught you hiding stuff you didn't pay for."

A long moment passed as Sandy stared at them, trying to seem like a responsible adult who would be capable of intimidating them, although they were probably, at most, only five years younger than her. Finally, the first boy scoffed and reached into the girl's purse for the cans. He dropped them all on the floor, where one of them broke open, spraying soda all over the aisle. "Whoops," he said, and they filed out of the store.

Sandy spent the rest of her shift mopping the floor and dealing with soda-soaked merchandise. When she looked up and saw it was closing time, Sandy let out a little cheer, deciding that all she wanted to do was go home and take a long bath. She thought it was odd that Di hadn't come in to visit during the day, because she usually did on her days off when Sandy was working. Sandy dismissed this, assuming that Di was just busy. Everybody else was too busy, except for people who wanted to make her clean up messes, Sandy thought to herself as she locked up the store.

When Sandy got home, the curtains in the living room were tightly drawn and the house was dark. This struck her as odd, because Will always made a point to keep at least one light on so everyone could see what they were doing when they got home and would make a real scene if this wasn't done. She dropped her keys and whacked her head on the wall when she bent down to pick them up. "Oh, fuck," Sandy said softly. It was a fitting end to a pretty awful birthday.

When Sandy turned on the living room light, it took her a moment to register what she saw there. Standing in the living room were about ten people, all standing around a stack of presents and a large cake. Di, Will, Jenny, Bah, Buzz Schneider, Phil Verchota, and two other guys from the hockey team were all there. " _Surprise_!" they yelled at her, and Sandy dropped her keys again.

"You kiss your mother with that mouth?" One of the hockey players called from the back of the room, and everyone laughed.

Sandy was unable to say anything for a moment, and as Bah moved forward to help her out of her coat, she managed, "I thought you all had practice tonight."

He shrugged one shoulder at her, grinning. "I lied."

Will had gotten Sandy her favourite, carrot cake, and once everyone had been served a piece, they all settled down to watch Sandy open gifts. "Before you open those, I'd like to just point out that some of us didn't know we were going to a birthday party until tonight," a guy she had never seen before piped up. "So some of them aren't necessarily the best gifts."

"Yeah. Robbie wants you to know that he didn't have time to make sure his present was better than everyone else's," Phil said.

The guy who had spoken, Robbie, apparently, shot the other hockey player a look and took an angry bite of his cake. Will looked as if he was rethinking the idea of throwing his sister a birthday party. "I'm sure they're all great," Sandy said, grabbing a random gift from the pile. "From Ken Morrow," she read. She peered at the only other guy she hadn't met, a tall guy with a bushy beard, who grinned at her. "Thank you, Ken." She tore the paper away and opened the box, revealing a coffee mug with the words "USA Hockey" printed on the side of it.

When she opened a white t-shirt with the same logo on it from Buzz Schneider and a matching black one from Phil Verchota a moment later, the guy named Robbie looked furiously around at his teammates. "Did everyone just raid the pile of merchandise at the rink? Doesn't that stuff all stink like hockey?"

Sandy cautiously sniffed the black t-shirt in her hands. "It does," she said, and the boys laughed again. "But they're great. Thanks so much, you guys. I really appreciate it."

Phil turned to Robbie. "Why don't you let her open yours now, if you're so great?" Robbie reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a card in an envelope.

"Don't tell me you just gave her an envelope full of cash," Buzz laughed, dodging the elbow Robbie tried to dig into his stomach as he passed it to Sandy.

"It's not much," Robbie told her. "I know Bah said you hadn't seen us play, so I thought..."

Sandy opened the card, which had a picture of a mountain and a vague, inspirational birthday greeting printed on the front of it. Inside were two tickets to a hockey game between the US Olympic Team and the Canadian National Team on October 14th. "Oh, wow," she said, showing the tickets to Bah, who was standing behind her. "It's tickets to your game next week!"

Everybody turned to stare at Robbie, who looked startled. "What?" he said.

"Are you kidding me?" Bah asked incredulously. "Why would you say you didn't have a good gift?"

"It's tickets to a hockey game for a girl who never comes to our practices and _clearly_ doesn't like hockey that much," Robbie said, shrugging. "I could have figured out something better if I'd had more time. Anyway, Sandy, we each get a certain number of family tickets to our home games, and so you're going to be sitting next to my mom. I hope that's okay."

"Of course," Sandy said, staring at the tickets. "Thank you so much."

By the time Sandy had opened a box full of makeup from Will and Jenny and a new skirt from Di, it was nearly 10 and the cake was gone. Sandy thanked the boys again for the gifts as they started to leave.

"You go ahead," Bah told his teammates, waving them out the door. "I'll come back later—I'm just going to help them clean up."

This was, of course, a ridiculous excuse to stay behind, as they had all been eating their cake off of paper plates and Jenny washed the cake plate in less than a minute. He remained in the house, though, clearly waiting to speak to Sandy alone. Will and Jenny excused themselves and went to bed, leaving Bah, Sandy, and Di alone in the living room.

Di was filtering through the eyeshadow pallets that Jenny had picked out for Sandy. "She did such a good job finding colours for you, Sandy," she said, leaning over on the couch to hold up the plastic container to Sandy's face. "You're going to look so gorgeous all made up."

"You can use it too," Sandy told her. "We'll do our makeup and go to the hockey game." She glanced over at Bah, who was sprawled out flat on his back on the living room floor, turning Sandy's USA Hockey mug around in his hand. "Right, Bah?"

Bah craned his neck off the floor. "Hmm? Yeah. You can get all dolled up and be our cheering section like the girls who come to games at the U. You guys and Robbie's mom." He grinned at them and dropped his head back on the floor.

Sandy frowned in the direction of Bah and then turned back to Di, trying to tell her with her eyes that Bah was waiting for her to leave. Di narrowed her eyes at Sandy, trying to decipher the message, and finally said, " _oh_! You know, I think I should probably get going. Beth'll think I ran away with one of your buddies, Bah." She stood, hurriedly grabbing her jacket, purse, and keys. Nearly sprinting out the door, she called over her shoulder, "happy birthday, Sandy! I'll call you tomorrow!"

Once she had gone, Bah sat up and grinned. "Nice girl," he said. "Takes her a minute to get a point, though."

Sandy smiled. "Don't be mean. It was a party. You should have just said you wanted to talk to me and you would have been at home in bed by now."

"Oh, no," Bah said, using a nearby coffee table to climb to his feet. "I'm not going to bed. We're going out for a beer. I'm going to buy you your first drink—well, I guess your first _legal_ drink," he amended, grinning at her expression. "Grab your coat. My present is out in the car, too."

Once they were outside, Sandy noticed that there was, in fact, a shopping bag in the back seat of Bah's car. She reached for it, and he swatted her hand away and pulled it into the front seat with him. "Just wait," he said. "I'll give it to you in the bar."

He drove them to a small, dumpy place about fifteen minutes away from where the boys all lived. "This is where we usually hang out when we have time off," Bah explained. The bar, Hubert's according to the sign out front, was dead quiet, which made sense for a Wednesday night.

The tired-looking bartender perked up at the sight of them coming through the door. "How's it going, Bah?" he asked. "I haven't heard from you boys for a while."

"Been busy," Bah said. "We've had a few games on the road and before that we were in Europe. Not much time for boozin'." He clapped a hand heavily on Sandy's shoulder. "This is my friend Sandy. Sandy, this is Richard."

"Hi," Sandy said, feeling like a small child hiding behind her mother's leg. Richard grinned and waved at her from behind the bar.

Bah lead Sandy to a booth near the back of the bar and dropped the shopping bag on the table. "It's actually Sandy's twenty-first birthday tonight, Rich," he said. "I'm out corrupting her. What do you want to drink? Beer?" Sandy nodded. "Can I get two, Rich?"

Richard brought over two Budweisers and waved away Bah's money. "First round is on me tonight. Happy birthday, sweetheart," he said. They thanked him and he retreated behind the bar and made himself look busy wiping the dust off of some glasses, his back turned to them.

"Yeah. Happy birthday," Bah said. "I hope you're having a good night."

"I was actually having the _worst_ day," Sandy told him, taking a sip of her beer. "I thought everyone forgot. I'm glad you didn't."

"I would never forget your birthday. The boys said I should win an award for how hard I sold our last minute practice on the phone. I felt pretty bad, actually, because you sounded miserable."

"I was!" Sandy said, laughing. "How did you convince those guys to come tonight?"

He shrugged. "Buzzy wanted to come, and I mentioned there would be cake and people just—surprise—started volunteering. I didn't tell them they needed to get you gifts or anything, either. I'm sorry for all the stinky USA gear you got."

Sandy shook her head. "It's all great. Really. I have something to wear when I run, and I actually used to collect mugs, so it's perfect. I can start collecting them again."

"Perfect," he agreed. "What happened to your old collection?"

"I left it at my parents' house when I moved out," Sandy said. She thought about the shelf in her old bedroom which had been almost dangerously full of mugs of different shapes and sizes, from all manner of locations that she had gathered over the years. She remembered the night she left, staring at the shelf and wishing that she could take them with her. Sandy assumed that the whole collection had been loaded into a cardboard box and thrown off a cliff.

Bah didn't seem to know how to respond to this. He lifted his beer off the table and then seemed to change his mind about drinking from it. After a moment, he just changed the subject. "Just so you know, you don't have to actually come to that game if you don't want to. I can just make up some excuse and give them back to Robbie. I really don't mind."

"No," Sandy said slowly. "I want to go. Why do you think I don't?"

He shrugged again. "A feeling I have."

"I don't think I want to watch you _practice_ ," Sandy replied. "It feels..." she gestured around with her hands, searching for the words. "It feels like something that's none of my business, if that makes sense."

"You mean you don't want to know how the sausage gets made," Bah said, and Sandy snorted into her beer. "It's not like that. There are almost always other people there. Gayle and some of the girlfriends and wives are there sometimes, too. I know what I've said about Herb probably doesn't make it seem like the most fun place to be, but in the broadest sense of the word, it's my _job_ , you know?" He shook his head. "But, again, you don't have to come if you don't want to. To any of it. It's not a requirement or anything."

"No, it'll be fun," Sandy said, shaking her head slowly. "Me and Di will make a night of it. Finally, being my friend will pay off for her."

Bah chuckled and took a sip of beer. "Well, it was bound to at some point."

"Really, though, Bah, I'm excited about the tickets. I'm glad you were able to tempt Robbie with cake. I had a lot of fun tonight."

Richard the bartender had moved on from the glasses under the counter to polishing old bottles of spirits displayed on the back of the bar. Sandy got the feeling he was trying very hard not to listen to their conversation in the otherwise completely empty bar.

Bah smiled at her. "I'm happy to hear it. You deserve to have a good birthday. Here," he said, pushing the shopping bag across the table with his elbow. "I hope they're the right size and everything, but I kept the receipt if not."

Bah took a long drink from his beer as Sandy reached into the bag, retrieving a shoe box. Inside the box was a brand new pair of blue and yellow Nike track shoes. "Bah!" Sandy said, taking them out of the box and examining them. "This is too much."

"Nah," he said, shaking his head. "I know you won't get a lot of use out of them now that it's starting to get cold, but maybe we can find an indoor track to go to once it's wintertime. Do you think they'll fit?"

Sandy scooted out to the edge of the booth and jammed her shoes off with her toes, bending down to pull the new ones on. "They're perfect," she said, leaning back and holding her feet in the air to show him. "I love them, Bah. Thanks."

When she had replaced the shoes in their box and slid back into her spot across from him, Bah grinned at her. "Is it good to compliment girls on the way running shoes look? They looked very good on you." They both laughed, and he reached across the table, taking her hand in his.

Sandy was suddenly struck by how happy she was. It had been a while since Ray had been on her mind, and she felt like things were finally _good_ for her.

She could see Bah examining her face. "What are you thinking about?" he asked.

For a moment, Sandy considered telling him, but in the end she said, "I was just thinking about how you were able to get Will to agree to have a bunch of strangers over tonight."

Bah grinned. "I think you underestimate how much I won him over that night I was there for dinner. I called there yesterday when I knew you were at work and told them I wanted to plan something for you and that I would take care of everything. Did you know that they were having a hard time figuring out what to do for you?"

"Really?"

"Uh-huh." Bah nodded. "You're apparently really hard to buy things for, since you're the only person any of us have ever met who hates telling people about herself. It's very frustrating. But yeah, Jenny said that they were—"

"Wait," Sandy said, cutting him off. "What do you mean, I hate telling people about myself?"

Bah paused, frowning. "I just mean you're a private person. You don't think so?"

"You don't think I've told you things about me?"

"Well..." The abrupt change in the tenor of the conversation had caught Bah flat footed. "I mean, there's definitely stuff about yourself that you go out of your way to not talk about. And that's okay, but—"

Sandy pulled her hand back across the table. "But what? But you're so curious that you just have to know? So you can tell Gayle and the boys? Why does everyone talk about me when I'm not around? Am I _that_ interesting?" Sandy hadn't even been angry about Bah talking about her to his friends before that moment, but she was suddenly furious.

Bah's mouth had fallen open slightly. He frowned, searching for words. "I'm sorry I told them," he said. "But I didn't know how to deal with it, and I was trying not to screw up. That's a real concern for me—I don't know what not to do because you won't tell me what the last guy did."

She shook her head at him. "You know what? Never mind. Maybe you'd better just take me home." Sandy scooted back out of the booth and stood. She wondered for a moment what to do with the shoes, and in the end, she left them on the table. Bah didn't move. He continued to stare at her from the booth. "Can you point me in the direction of where I'd need to walk to go home? I can just walk."

He pointed, a bewildered look on his face, and he turned right around in his seat to watch her leave the bar.

Once Sandy got outside, she considered that perhaps choosing to walk home might not have been the wisest choice. It was nearly midnight, and she had only a light jacket and the warmth of half a beer protecting her from the wind, but she balled up her fists and started walking in the direction Bah had indicated. A few moments later, as she was crossing the deserted street, she heard the door of the bar bang against the outside wall as Bah ran outside. He called after her. "You're not going to _walk_ home! C'mon!"

Sandy kept stomping away in the direction of home, more out of stubbornness than anything else, ignoring the twinge of guilt she felt when she thought about he fact that Bah had gone out of his way to plan a surprise birthday party for her on one of his few days off. He had gotten people to show up, making it a little less of a sad affair for a girl with only two friends in a relatively new city. He had bought her new shoes. Sandy slowed her angry walk a little. All of this didn't change the fact that he had been talking, regardless of whether or not he was asking, about the Ray situation. It clearly still mattered to him that she hadn't explained everything. She felt annoyed about this and, by extension, Sandy felt annoyed at Di for having told Beth about her. The last thing she wanted was to be the subject of gossip for the only two people she knew in the state.

Bah's car came crawling up beside her. "Can you get in, please?" he asked, his arm hanging out the open window. "It's cold outside."

Sandy didn't answer.

"Y'know, you're not even walking in the right direction." Sandy stopped walking abruptly and Bah's car skidded to a halt beside her a second later. "You're headed for downtown Minneapolis right now. And you might be there by morning if you hustle, but that river might be a nuisance, though," he said. She glared at him and he held up his palm. "Why don't you get into the car?"

"Who are you, Ted Bundy?" she asked loudly, her voice echoing around her on the quiet street where they were stopped. "Are you trying to _strand_ me out here? I just want to go home."

He rolled his eyes. "Yeah. You're not telling me what I did to make you so mad, so I figured I'd just _kill you_ out here." When she just stared at him, he slapped his hand against the side of the car. "I was obviously going to come after you. You're in Burnsville, Minnesota, Sandy. Maybe let's give it a rest."

Sandy spun on her heel and took off walking back towards the bar. She heard Bah turning his car around and after a moment he pulled up beside her again. "That's still not the right way," he called at her from the driver's seat.

"I don't care. I'm going back to the bar. I'm gonna call Di."

"It's pretty late. Are you really going to bug her right now?"

Sandy nodded, and Bah sped ahead of her, pulled over, and parked on the side of the street. He got out of the car and stood beside it. Sandy stopped walking.

"What?"

Bah threw his hands up. "What do you mean, 'what?' Why won't you talk to me? I made you really angry just now and I would like to talk about it."

Sandy had always been impulsive, but she had never been the kind of person to stay angry with anyone for too long. It occurred to her that maybe she was refusing to tell him why she was upset because she was embarrassed at how quickly her anger had dissolved into a different feeling, one that was harder to describe. She sat down on the curb, and he sank down next to her. "I was mad at you," Sandy said.

Bah snorted. "No kidding. Was it—"

She cut him off. "Let me finish. It makes me worry that you're thinking about how I haven't told you my whole life's story in the background of every conversation we have. And I know that's stupid," she said, seeing him about to tell her this, "but before tonight it seemed like you had forgotten about all of that and were just interested in getting to know me _now_ , you know? So knowing that you think about it enough to mention it—to make a joke about it—was just pretty disappointing."

Bah rested his chin on his palm. "I'm sorry I made you feel that way. But you can understand why I'd still be curious, right? I _am_ trying to get to know you now, but you can't expect me to forget about this huge thing that brought you all the way here. It's important."

Sandy frowned down at the street as she considered this. "I know," she said after a moment. "And I'll tell you about it. About all of it, but not right now. I was honestly just thinking tonight that it was so good to just not dwell on it for a change. This," she reached over and grabbed Bah's hand, "is completely separate from everything back home, and I _need_ that."

"Hmm." Bah turned his head to look at her, still resting the side of his face on his fist in a pose that looked very uncomfortable. "Well, I feel just awful now."

Sandy shrugged. "Don't. You're right, you don't know what you're tiptoeing around. I'm sorry to be so secretive. And I'm sorry I ran away from you."

Bah shook his head. "Hey—you don't have to be. I've always wanted to chase after someone in the streets, especially someone who loudly accuses me of being a serial killer."

She snorted into her hand. "Jesus."

A few quiet moments passed as a solitary car drove past them, the driver peering inquisitively at them out the window. Bah waved him on, and then turned back to Sandy. "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"Why did you ask me about sleeping together when we were on the phone the other day?"

Sandy frowned at him. "I told you. People at the wedding were bringing it up."

"Yeah, but—" he paused, tossing a pebble across the street like he was skipping it across water. "Why did you want to know if I'd been thinking about it?"

"Just something that Di said." She ducked her head and grimaced. "It's kind of embarrassing."

"What was it?"

Sandy felt herself start to blush and was thankful that it was dark out. "Well," she said, taking a breath. "She made me worry that you weren't thinking about it because you never brought it up. It's stupid."

"No, it's not," Bah said, his voice thoughtful. "I can see a kind of logic to that. She's—well, Sandy, she's completely wrong, for the record. I never brought it up because I wasn't sure about your—"

"My position, yeah," Sandy interrupted him, and they both laughed.

"Right." Bah smiled down at the street for a while and neither of them spoke. Finally, he cleared his throat and looked over at her. "You know," he said, "I was kind of thinking that tonight would be—you know— _the night._ I don't know if that's something I'm supposed to just _say_ to you, but the normal rules don't really seem to apply here. I—uh—you know, I made Pav go stay in somebody else's apartment for the night."

Sandy put her face in her hands and started to laugh, and a moment later she heard Bah join in. "Oh, Christ," she said, wiping tears from her eyes. "That guy probably just hates my guts, huh?"

"Could be," Bah said. "He wasn't thrilled but I think he figured it was better than being there and being kept up all—all night." He faltered on the last few words of his sentence, glancing at Sandy as if hoping she wasn't really listening.

Sandy, who by this point was very tired, continued to giggle. "All night, huh?"

He ran a hand through his hair and grinned at her, embarrassed. "Well, I mean, yeah. I was going to show you _quite_ a time before you decided to flip the script on me."

They laughed some more, and when both of them had fallen silent again, Sandy rested her head on Bah's shoulder. "I'm having a lot of fun with you," she said quietly. "Thanks."

Bah didn't reply. He put his arm around her waist.

"Do you want to go back to your apartment?" Sandy asked.

She felt his arm pull away from her and Bah sat up straight, causing her to raise her head off of his shoulder. "What?"

Sandy shrugged. "Don't you?"

"Well, yeah, but—don't feel like you have to because of, you know, everything that happened tonight. You don't have to—"

She cut him off by grabbing a handful of his shirt, pulling him close, and kissing him. Then Sandy got to her feet, holding out a hand to help him up. "Don't read too much into it. I feel like I'm owed _quite_ a time."

Bah stood, keeping hold of Sandy's hand. He awkwardly spun her around like they were dancing, getting their arms tangled up. "Just a taste of things to come," he said, and the two of them started laughing again like maniacs before finally making their way to Bah's car.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11 - October 14, 1979**

Sandy hadn't been to a lot of large-scale sports venues like the Met Center in Bloomington. The closest experience she had to compare was the time Ray had taken her to a Seahawks game in Seattle. It had poured rain on them, someone had speared Ray in the chin with an umbrella and he had nearly gotten in a fight. The Met Center was, thankfully, completely dry on the night that she and Di went to see Team USA play the Canadian National Team.

"Everybody wants to see them kick some Canadian ass here at home," Di explained as they waited in line for popcorn, which Di had insisted they get. "And they _stomped_ them last night in Hibbing. Hopefully they can do it again tonight."

"How do you _know_ that they won last night? I didn't even know that," Sandy said.

Di shrugged. "My dad told me. He heard from somebody he works with." She leaned in closer, lowering her voice. "You know, he was pretty curious about why exactly I was given a free ticket to this game. He wouldn't accept that they were your gift—he probably thinks I'm turning tricks for hockey tickets."

Sandy grinned. "Well, that's maybe the most Minnesotan thing you could do."

Once they finally reached the front of the line and Di had bought a comically large tub of popcorn, they made their way to their seats. They had a good view of the net where Di said Canada's goalie would be for the first and third periods. This was good because, in Di's words, "we'll be able to see most of the goals."

"What if they score all the goals in the second period? "

Di frowned. "They'll—it won't be—they just won't. We'll see all the goals. I promise. They're good seats."

Gayle Schneider waved from her spot four rows above them, where she sat with two older people who Sandy assumed were Buzz's parents. "They must have a whole section set aside for family and everything," she said to Di as they squeezed through the aisle to get to their seats.

"It would be worth it to keep seeing Bah to get tickets to all these games," Di said. "I bet it would be fifteen bucks a piece to actually buy them. Hey, do you think that's Robbie's mom?"

Di had spoken loudly enough for the woman in the seat next to Sandy to hear. She turned to look at them and smiled. "Oh, you two must be my honourary McClanahans for the evening." She held out a hand for them both to shake. "Virginia."

"Sandy, and this is Di," Sandy said, as Di struggled to wipe the butter from the popcorn off her hand. "It's nice to meet you."

"You too," Virginia said. She frowned a little at them, and then said, "now, I hope you ladies don't mind my asking, but neither of you are involved with Rob, are you?"

Di let out a quiet giggle. "No, no, no," she said.

Virginia frowned, and Sandy gave Di an incredulous look. "It's another guy on the team," she said. "Robbie's very nice, though. It was really great of him to give us these tickets."

"I think so. You know, he doesn't like to tell me about these things, and so when he told me that two girls would be coming to sit with me tonight... Well, I'm sure you can understand why I was curious. Two girls seemed like an awful lot for him." Virginia rolled her eyes and started to say something else, but someone behind them called her name, and she smiled politely at Sandy and Di and turned away again.

Di dug her hand back into the popcorn and leaned close to Sandy. "Yikes," she said in a quiet voice. "At least nobody can say she doesn't try to involve herself in her son's life."

Sandy shushed her as the players started to come out onto the ice. She clapped with the rest of the fans, trying to pick Bah out without the help of the programme she had been handed at the door. Sandy had it narrowed down to three players before Di reached over and grabbed the programme out of her hands.

"They won't sit still. I have no idea which one he is," Di said, flicking through the small book in search of the roster. She tapped her fingernail on the page when she found it. "There we go. 28. Robbie's 24, if you feel like sucking up," she added, grinning at Sandy.

"I'll keep that in mind."

Sandy and Di didn't have much of a chance to speak to Virginia McClanahan during the game. She was a highly sociable woman, turning and twisting in her seat to shake hands and talk to other family members sitting nearby. When the third period had ended, Team USA had won 6-0 and both of their mouths were dry from the tub of salty popcorn.

As the girls stood, Gayle Schneider fought her way over to them through the crowd of people climbing up the stairs. "I was hoping I'd get a chance to come and say hi. I'm Gayle," she told Di, holding out a hand for her to shake. "I don't think we've met, officially."

"Nope," Di said, pumping her hand up and down. "Di. Which one was your husband?"

"Number 25, on Bah's line," Gayle said. "They had a good night, huh?"

Sandy had tried to pay attention to how well Bah had done and so she knew, by extension, that Buzz had gotten a goal and an assist that evening. She hadn't known what constituted a good game when one played for the Olympic team, and so she tucked this knowledge away and nodded.

Gayle turned to wave goodbye to someone behind her. "What do you ladies have going on for the rest of the night?" she asked, turning back to them. "Did you make plans with Bah?"

Sandy shook her head. "Not really. Di has to go home, but he told us to stay and say hi after. And then I think we're just going home."

"Well, we should all go do something," Gayle said. "Drinks or—" she paused, grimacing. "You're old enough now, right?"

"I am," Sandy said. "Di isn't, though." She jerked her thumb at Di, who gave an apologetic shrug.

Gayle hummed thoughtfully. "Well, the boys just have practice tomorrow in the afternoon, so they'll probably want to do _something_ fun tonight. They usually want to go out for drinks or dancing or something after their games, but we can figure something else out if you can't get in." She started walking backwards up the stairs. "C'mon, we'll go wait for them by the dressing room."

Di and Sandy lagged behind a little. "Are—are we allowed?" Di asked.

"Of course!" Gayle waved a dismissive hand at them. "If anybody asks, we can just tell them that I'm Buzz's wife and you're Bah's girlfriend—?" She faltered, raising her eyebrows at Sandy, questioning. Sandy shook her head. "Oh, shit. Well, we'll see if I can say anything with my foot in my mouth. Hopefully nobody asks."

Sandy and Di exchanged a look and followed Gayle up the stairs. "You should go with them," Di said as they went. "Don't feel bad. You'll have so much fun."

It felt a little to Sandy like she would be deserting Di to go hang out with Bah, which was not the kind of friend that Sandy wanted to be. "Are you sure? I came with you."

Di shrugged. "And you can leave with Bah. I don't mind. Besides, you don't see him that often, and you can see me any old time. I'll just stay until he comes out and say hello and then head home." She checked her watch. "Stupid curfew."

Gayle lead them down a hallway and another long flight of stairs leading to where the ice surface was, coming to a stop in front of what Sandy assumed was the dressing room door. After they had been standing there for a moment, a man in a checked suit jacket came walking out with a stride like a drill sergeant. He gave them the briefest of glances as he passed. "Gayle," he said.

She nodded at the man. "Hi, Herb."

Sandy stiffened at the sound of the name and watched the man walk away. Once he was gone, she turned to Gayle. "Was that their coach?"

"Oh, yeah," Gayle said. "I bet Bah's told you all about him."

"Just kind of scary things," Sandy said.

" _That_ guy?" Di craned her neck and stared down the hallway as if she could still see Herb marching away. "He looks a lot younger than I thought he would. Didn't seem that scary to me."

Gayle grinned. "Well, I guess they don't need to be old. And I wouldn't say he's scary. Just—intimidating, maybe. He's not someone you want to make mad."

Someone suddenly grabbed Sandy and Di's shoulders from behind. They both jumped and turned to see Bah standing there. Sandy noticed that he looked pretty terrific in his shirt and tie and dramatically tousled, shower wet hair. He, in turn, noticed her staring and winked. "Jumpy, are we?"

"Oh, I was just telling them about Herb," Gayle said.

"Ah, say no more. That's enough to put the most dedicated horror fan on edge." He grinned at them. "So, how did you guys like the game?"

"It was great," Di piped up. "We loved it."

Bah raised his eyebrows at her and turned to Sandy. "Did we love it?"

Sandy nodded her agreement. "I guess I can see what all the fuss is about."

He started to reply but was interrupted by Buzz Schneider leaving the dressing room. "Oh, hi," he said, walking past them to kiss Gayle on the cheek. "Were all of you waiting for me?"

"I guess sort of," Gayle said. "We were wondering what your plans were for tonight." She gestured at him and Bah as she spoke.

Buzz frowned deeply. "Mom and Dad are here, aren't they?" As Gayle nodded, his face lit up with unmistakable relief. "I don't think _we_ ," he pointed at himself and then at Gayle, "should go out tonight if they're here visiting. We should go right now, you know—just so we don't keep them waiting any longer." Sandy noticed, curiously, that Buzz kept staring over their shoulders at the dressing room door.

"Oh," Gayle said. "Okay." She turned to Sandy, Di, and Bah. "Have a lot of fun for us, all right?"

They all nodded obediently and the Schneiders left. Buzz hustled Gayle up the stairs, clapping his hands behind her to make her go faster. Di frowned at Bah after they had gone. "Why was he in such a hurry to get out of here?"

Bah laughed, but he seemed to take a page or of Buzz's book as he started shepherding them back towards the staircase. "Not super-subtle, was he? Our goalie is just a little _much_ tonight, is all. Jimmy," he added to Sandy, as if remembering that he had mentioned the name to her at some point. "He was trying to get people to come out dancing tonight, and I said yes because I couldn't think of an excuse fast enough, so that's—" he paused, looking over at Di. "Are you old enough to get into bars?"

Di shook her head. "No, but I can't come out anyway. You could just use me as an excuse, though."

Bah ran a hand through his hair and sighed. "No, better not. I should probably go and be a good teammate. How about you?" he asked, elbowing Sandy. "Do you feel like coming out?"

"Sure," Sandy said. "Not if it's a team building thing, though, and Di—"

"Oh my _God_ , please just go with him," Di burst out. "You're the luckiest and you're going to have the _best_ time."

Bah nodded. "It's true. You are going to have an incredible time. Plus having a girl with us'll make it look less like we're just out prowling at the bar. Sometimes it seems..." He trailed off, his eyes widening a little as they heard the door to the dressing room open again. The three of them turned to look.

It was only Robbie, but he was with another guy who very well might have been Jimmy for all Sandy and Di knew. "Are you actually coming out tonight?" Robbie asked.

"Yeah. Sandy's coming," Bah said.

"Oh, dammit. I was hoping you'd have something else going on that I could use. They're all going somewhere downtown to go dancing and—" he paused, shaking his head.

The other guy grinned at them. "It'll be the one time being underage paid off. I don't think I've met you," he added, nodding at Sandy and Di. "I'm Dave Christian."

"Koho," Robbie said.

Di shook Dave's hand. "Di. I have no funny nicknames."

"And I've mentioned Sandy," Bah said, jerking a thumb in her direction.

"Good to meet you, Di... Debbie," Dave said, moving from Di to shake hands with Sandy.

Sandy was so puzzled as they shook that she missed her cue to correct him. Surely Dave had just heard Bah say her name.

"Did you ladies enjoy the game?" Robbie asked. "And, more importantly, was my mom nice to you?"

"She was," Sandy said. "And the game was a lot of fun—thanks again for the tickets."

"She wanted to know if we were your _girlfriends,_ " Di added, giggling, and Robbie squeezed his eyes shut in embarrassment.

"Did she really?" He shook his head. "I'm sorry about that. Do you know if she was still up there?"

They shrugged, assuming that she was probably was, still visiting. Robbie and Dave ran up the stairs to go check. Sandy turned to Bah when they had gone. "Didn't your parents come?"

He grinned at her. "Why, were you wanting to meet them?" Sandy shook her head firmly and he laughed, starting to make his way back towards the stairs to the main level of the arena. "Don't answer so quick. No, they came last night to the game in Hibbing, and that was a nice, short drive for them, so I didn't expect them to come all the way down here on a Sunday night."

When they got back upstairs, Bah excused himself to go, as he put it, "gladhand with all the parents." This was an accurate description, Sandy thought, as she watched him exclaim as he encountered parents of guys on the team, shaking hands and listening intently to everyone he spoke to. Sandy stood against the wall near the door, feeling a little awkward and glad that Di had stuck around for a few more minutes.

"He'd make a good politician," Sandy said.

"Like a younger, better looking JFK," Di replied and then, seeing the expression on Sandy's face, scoffed. "I don't think you appreciate how good looking Bah is as much as you should."

Sandy laughed. "Sorry to hear that. I was staring at him downstairs when he came out and I'm pretty sure he noticed. He kind of caught me off guard."

Di giggled. "Isn't there just something about a hockey player?"

"Yeah." Sandy grinned. She hadn't expected to see them all in suits. The hockey players didn't really fit her mental image of what an athlete looked like after a game. "I kind of get it now."

"Do you think you feel any different about him now that you two have... You know?"

Sandy had told Di about her and Bah sleeping together during the car ride to the arena. She told her everything, from the trip to the bar to how she had tried to sneak into the house the next morning, still dressed in her clothes from the night before. Sandy had encountered Will and Jenny eating breakfast at the kitchen table, and they had acted a little _too_ normal. Di had asked the question that Sandy had herself been thinking about with worrying frequency—the way she felt about Bah had definitely shifted slightly since that night, in a way that she hadn't expected. "I guess so," she said. "We actually haven't talked much since. They're always practicing and everything."

"You mean—" Di leaned closer to Sandy. "You mean you haven't _done_ it since that night?"

Sandy lightly elbowed Di away. " _No,_ Di. He's barely had time to call me on the phone, much less that."

"But you'd like to?" Di stared down at Sandy, expectant. After a moment, Sandy huffed, rolled her eyes, and then, not seeing the point in lying, nodded. Di clapped her hands together, and a few people standing nearby looked over at them. "I _knew_ it," she said. "And I can't believe I haven't asked yet—how _was_ it?"

Sandy stared at the ground. Her friends in high school had been a little on the quiet side, and so she figured that if they _had_ been having sex, they just weren't telling her about it. She had friends while she was with Ray, but they were all closer to his age, and Sandy had always gotten the feeling that they were uncomfortable talking about her relationship with Ray. Having a discussion about sex while the subject in question was mere feet away having a conversation with Buzz Schneider's parents was uncharted territory for Sandy. "It was—" she paused as a hockey player came running up the stairs and walked past them. "It was good." She remembered the comparatively open conversation she and Bah had had on the street that night and sighed.

Di, who had been watching Sandy experience a kind of crisis of character, was giggling into her hands. "You're so funny," she said. "You know you don't have to go into detail about it if you don't want to. I know that's not the way you are."

"Well," Sandy said, folding her arms, "why did you ask?"

"Because I wanted to see what you'd say. And if it was good enough for you to say _anything_ , it—"

Di stopped short as Bah suddenly appeared in front of them. "Ready to go?" he said. He gazed at Sandy, a curious expression on his face. "What's the matter? Is it too warm in here?"

Sandy, who could feel how red her cheeks were, shook her head as Di struggled to keep from laughing. "No. I'm fine. Where are we going?"

Continuing to peer suspiciously at Sandy, Bah said, "somewhere downtown in Minneapolis—there's a band playing. I said I'd drive us so we can leave whenever we want."

His pessimistic attitude towards the night gave Sandy an odd sense of foreboding. As they said goodbye to Di in the parking lot, she wondered if maybe she should have fought harder to just go home.

"So, what's going on with that guy Jimmy? You know, just so I'm prepared for it," Sandy asked once they were on their way.

Bah laughed a little and slowed down to stop for a red light. "Oh, that. You probably won't have to worry about him at all tonight—he was just sort of fired up because he had a good game. It's understandable, but he's a different guy, so he gets sort of carried away," he said. "You know, goalie stuff."

"What do you mean?"

The light turned green. "Oh, I guess you wouldn't know that—goalies are always odd. With Jimmy, I think he's just aware of how good he is and doesn't know how to deal with that. He's a big fan of telling everybody else what's wrong with their game, especially when he's doing well." Bah shrugged. "It can be a little much. He's a good enough guy, though."

They drove around downtown for a while, trying to find somewhere to park. Eventually Bah found a spot three blocks away, near where Dave Silk, Jack O'Callahan, and another guy were piling out of a car. "Hey, you brought Debbie," Jack said, clapping Bah on the back. "How are you doing, sweetheart?"

"She was at the game tonight, ya know, O'Cee," Dave said. "I saw her up in the stands next to McClanahan's mom in the family section."

Jack pushed his glasses up his nose. "No shit," he said. "You don't even like hockey, do you?"

Sandy shook her head. "I don't _not_ like it," she said. "I just haven't watched much."

"Well, what'd you think?"

"It was fun. I saw your goal," she told Dave. This wasn't a lie, but Sandy had actually had a lot of trouble keeping up with the game and had only seen this goal because she had been resting her eyes and watching Dave when he got the puck and scored. She didn't remember seeing Jack at all, but she didn't mention this.

Dave grinned, but before he could speak, the other guy elbowed him. "You have a better shot at clapping eyes on Halley's Comet, so consider yourself lucky."

"Aw, shut up," Dave said. The two guys started playfully shoving at each other, and a moment later Jack joined in, apparently unable to resist the siren call of horseplay.

Sandy turned back to Bah and mouthed, "who is that?" gesturing at the third guy.

"Jack Hughes," Bah said, as the other players continued to walk ahead of them. "He's another one of the Boston guys. And he didn't play tonight, so make sure you don't tell him he had a good game."

She laughed. "Thanks for the tip."

When they got to the door, Sandy held it open for a man carrying a guitar case and a duffel bag. He winked at her as he passed. "Thanks, darlin'," he said. "Remind me to get you a drink later."

Sandy blinked and was unable to come up with a response before he was gone toward the back of the bar, swinging the duffel bag in his hand.

"Do you know that guy?" Bah asked, and she shook her head. "Musicians are the only guys who are worse than hockey players, you know," he said, widening his eyes goofily at her as they went inside.

"That's pretty convenient for you, a hockey player, to say," Sandy told him.

Bah shrugged. "We're still second worst. That's still very bad."

They settled at a cluster of tables that the boys had pushed together as the band came onto the stage and started to play. The guy from the door was the lead guitarist, loudly playing Rolling Stones covers to the crowded bar. Sandy studied the players at the table, mentally taking note of all names she knew—Dave Silk, Jack O'Callahan, Jack Hughes, Bah, Robbie McClanahan, and Phil Verchota. There were four more who she hadn't met yet, and four girls who Sandy assumed were wives or girlfriends before considering that _she_ was neither.

It wasn't nearly as awful a time as Bah seemed to think it would be. He certainly appeared to be enjoying himself. They were sitting next to a guy with a high pitched voice who introduced himself to Sandy as Mike Eruzione. "So, is this as glamorous as you thought it would be, Deb?" Mike gestured around them at the bar. "Out with an Olympic athlete?"

Sandy grinned. "Oh, it's much better, for sure."

Mike waved a dismissive hand at her and made a _pshaw_ sound. "You shoulda come with us to Europe and seen all the sights."

"Well, I barely knew her at the time, so I don't think I would have invited her to come to Europe for a month," Bah pointed out. "Unless you would have said yes," he added, looking quickly from Mike to Sandy.

"Ah, you've got no romance in your heart," Mike said. He seemed a little drunker than everyone else. "Have you ever been to Europe?"

Sandy shook her head. "No, but it would be interesting to go someday."

"She wants to go to Paris," Bah added.

Mike rolled his head around, apparently not content to just roll his eyes. "There's no hockey in Paris."

Bah laughed and took a sip of his beer. "That's what _I_ said!"

"We were in _Oslo_ , and _that's_ a beautiful city. Right, Bah?" Mike paused for Bah to nod. "Now, _that_ would be quite a date."

Bah grinned at Sandy. "Can't argue with that."

Some time later, the band took a break. Sandy happened to be at the bar when they did, trying and failing to catch the eye of the bartender. The guitarist was suddenly there beside her. He snapped his fingers and the bartender came over, looking a little harassed, and he ordered a bourbon and water. The bartender walked away before Sandy could get his attention and the guitarist rested his elbows on the bar, waiting. After a moment, he turned to look at her, seeming to have just noticed her standing there. "Hi there," he said, turning around and leaning back against the bar. "Are you having a good night?"

Sandy nodded. "Yeah, thanks. You guys were great up there." She gestured up at the stage, somewhat unnecessarily. She hadn't really been paying attention to the band, but she found it easier to act like she had been than it was to act like she knew what had happened during the hockey game.

"Oh, thank you," he said. "You know, I used to say that the only reason why a guy would become a musician is for the girls and the cigarettes. And I've been trying to quit smoking, so that means a lot coming from you—it's great to meet a fan." There was a long pause during which Sandy tried to work out how to respond to this. Eventually he laughed. "I'm just bugging you. We have no fans. I'm Jeff," he said, holding out a hand.

They shook. "Sandy," she said.

"What are you drinking tonight, Sandy?" Jeff asked. "I believe I promised you a drink."

"You don't have to do that," Sandy said. "I'm getting something for me and the guy I'm with. Thank you, though."

Jeff put his hand up and the bartender came walking back like he was attached to it, holding Jeff's drink. "The nice lady would like to order something," he said. "I got this round."

Sandy ordered beer for herself and Bah and tried to take her money out of her purse. "You don't have to—" she tried again, but Jeff cut her off.

"I know," he said. "I'm just being polite. Don't tell your guy someone else bought it, though—I know I wouldn't like that." With that, Jeff turned and disappeared into the crowd.

Bah watched Sandy walk back over to the table. "Who the hell _is_ that guy? Is he bothering you?"

"No, no." Sandy set the glasses down and sat. "He just bought our drinks."

"What?" Bah craned his neck and Sandy realized that Jeff had been right. "Why?"

Sandy shrugged, feeling the eyes of some of the people at the table on them, even as they all continued to have their own conversations. "Just being nice, I guess. Is that not okay?"

"No, it is, it's just—I'm not sure why he'd do that, is all," Bah said, staring up at the stage as the band came back on. "I'm gonna—" he looked back down at Sandy, who was frowning at him. "Apologize. I'm sorry. What's our policy on jealousy, just so I know?"

Sandy laughed in spite of herself. "Our official stance is that it's not allowed when we get free beer out of it," she said, clinking her glass against Bah's. "Don't worry about him."

To Bah's credit, he didn't seem worried about it. Sandy did notice that he started drinking more, which made her slowly sip her beer, thinking it might come to her to drive them home. Bah even clapped politely as the band thanked the crowd and left the stage. It was past midnight by that point, but the boys decided to stay and have another drink. "If enough of us are burnt out tomorrow, it'll be harder for Herb to notice," Jack Hughes said.

"Or everybody else will look better in comparison," Phil pointed out.

"Who's saying they don't already?" The guy who had spoken, the one with black hair and blue eyes and a truckload of bravado, was, by Sandy's best guess, Jimmy the goalie. He was the only one at the table who hadn't introduced himself.

Sandy was suddenly aware of Bah being gone. She looked around, confused. He had just been there a moment before, poking fun at Mike. "Did you see where Bah went?" she asked.

"He was either going to the can or going outside," Mike said. "He was in a hurry to get out of here, either way."

A terrible thought occurred to Sandy, and she scanned the room in search of Jeff. Not finding him sitting with the band at the bar, she got to her feet. Mike peered up at her through thick beer goggles.

"What?"

She navigated around tables and chairs, hurrying toward the door. Surely Bah wasn't drunk enough to say something to Jeff, she thought. He had been perfectly fine up until that point.

Sandy pushed through the door and took a deep breath of the cold night air. "Are you getting to the point when the night takes a negative turn?" Sandy turned in the direction the voice had come from and saw Jeff the guitarist leaning against the wall of the bar, a cigarette between his fingers.

She let out the breath she hadn't noticed she was holding in, looking around for Bah and realizing how ridiculous she was being. "I thought you were trying to quit," she said after a moment.

He looked at the cigarette in his hand like he hadn't realized it was there and flicked it away. "Starting right now, let's say," he said. "You didn't answer my question."

"I'm looking for my friend."

He smirked at her and pushed himself off the building. "What—the one with the choirboy haircut? What are you doing with that guy, anyway? He pretty great in the sack?"

He walked towards Sandy and she took a step back. She wanted to turn and walk back into the bar, but she felt, at the same time, compelled to keep talking to Jeff. It felt exciting in a way she couldn't quite describe. "Do you get many girls by talking negatively about the guys they're with?" Sandy heard herself ask the question as if she was listening to the exchange on the radio.

Jeff made a wishy-washy motion with his hand. "Well, different kinds of girls," he said. "I hope I'm not making you uncomfortable. I bet you're wishing you hadn't opened that door for me earlier. Let me try something else." He paused, apparently in deep thought. After a moment he cleared his throat and said, "on stage at these bars I like to look out at the crowd and try to pick out the most beautiful girl in the room. For inspiration, you know. Tonight, I knew it would be you before we even started playing."

He took a couple more steps closer as the door opened next to them. Jeff continued walking, past Sandy and into the bar without another word. She shivered slightly and turned to see who was standing in the doorway.

It was Dave Silk. "What's goin' on?" he asked, raising his eyebrows at her.

"I thought maybe Bah came out here to get some air," Sandy said. "Have you seen him?"

Dave nodded. "Yeah, I have. C'mon, you'll freeze your ass standing out here." He held the door open for Sandy to come back into the bar and steered her in the direction on the washroom. "He's in there," he said, fanning her towards the door. "He told me to go find you."

Sandy paused. "In the... Men's room?" She felt like an idiot a half a second after she spoke. Dave laughed as she pushed through the door.

Bah was standing outside of the only stall, and Sandy was oddly relieved to see that he wasn't alone. Robbie was crouched in front of the toilet. She came around the corner and Bah glanced up at her. He grinned. "Robbie's feeling a little sick. We were wondering if you were okay to get us home."

"It's not—" Robbie raised his head out of the toilet for a moment to speak. "It's not that I'm _drunk._ I think I got food poisoning. It might be serious. We gotta go to the _hospital._ "

"Really—?" Sandy started to ask, but Bah cut her off, shaking his head. "Oh. Okay, Robbie, do you want to go home?" Robbie nodded into the toilet. "Okay, help him up," she told Bah, who awkwardly grabbed his teammate by the armpits and hauled him to his feet.

Sandy kept her head down as they helped Robbie outside. His "food poisoning" was so bad that he needed to stop and throw up again on the front step of a building they passed on the way back to the car. "Yell if you're going to puke in my car," Bah told him. "If you make a mess back there you're cleaning it up, Robbie."

In response, Robbie curled up in the back seat and groaned. Sandy pulled a seat belt around his waist, tightening it so he wouldn't roll onto the floor.

They had been driving for a few minutes in silence before Bah spoke. "So, where did you go? Silkie said you weren't at the table or in the bathroom."

"I was looking for you outside," she said.

Bah frowned. "Why did you think I'd be outside?"

Robbie said something quietly and so Sandy took a moment to check to see if he was all right in the rear view mirror before responding. "I just—I looked up and all of the sudden you were gone, and I couldn't see that guy from the band anymore either, so I thought—"

"You thought I went out to try and _fight_ him?" Bah let out a short laugh. "Please tell me you're joking."

"Well, you were seriously annoyed when he bought our drinks," Sandy said. "What was I supposed to think?"

Bah shook his head. "I don't know."

They didn't speak for the remainder of the drive, and Sandy didn't kid herself by thinking that maybe Bah had just passed out. When they pulled up to the apartment complex, Sandy got out of the car and tried to help Robbie stand, but Bah got in the way.

"Just take my car home," he said. "Bring it back in the morning. I can handle him."

Sandy stared at him, incredulous. "Seriously? Are you really that mad?"

Bah pulled Robbie into a standing position. "Nope," he said, and turned away from her.

This all suddenly seemed ridiculous to Sandy, and so she threw Bah's keys at his retreating back and started to walk home. She heard them jingle onto the sidewalk and Bah let out a sigh before he called after her.

"Come back. Don't make me chase after you in my car; I'm inebriated."

Robbie's roommate, Phil Verchota, was still at the bar. This was lucky, as the noise the three of them made trying to get Robbie (who kept insisting that he wasn't drunk) to go to bed would have woken the heaviest sleeper.

"Is anyone else _starving_? Do you guys want a sandwich or something?"

Sandy shook her head, but Bah, seemingly forgetting their mission of getting Robbie to go to sleep, said, "I could eat a sandwich."

Robbie, stubbornly refusing Sandy's help, made the three of them somewhat sloppy ham and cheese sandwiches and climbed up onto the kitchen counter to eat his. "Careful you don't get crumbs all over my clean floor," he told them.

When they had all finished eating and Robbie was satisfied that there were no crumbs anywhere, he finally allowed himself to be gently shoved into his bedroom.

"You two should stay the night. I don't want you driving," Robbie said, lying on his back on the bed while Bah wrenched his shoes off and tossed them into the corner of the room.

"Well, we're just going down the hall, so I don't know how much damage we can do," Bah said.

Robbie shook his head and patted the bed on either side of his body. "Just sleep it off here. And please don't fuck on my bed once I'm asleep. Debbie. Please."

Sandy glanced at Bah, who heaved an exhausted sigh. He mouthed, "just for a bit," at her and then said, out loud, "you got it, buddy," and he laid down on Robbie's left side. After a moment, Sandy settled down on his right.

The apartment was silent for the first time since Sandy entered it, and she felt the weight of the night slide off of her like a wet blanket. Within minutes, Robbie was snoring next to them.

Several minutes passed, and then something occurred to Sandy. "Why do all these guys keep calling me Debbie?" she asked, and Bah, who had evidently almost been asleep, raised his head off the bed with a grunt.

"Huh? Oh—I wondered when you were gonna ask about that. The other day I mentioned you, and someone asked me who you looked like. You know, like which celebrity. And I just thought of someone blonde and said Debbie Harry, because I couldn't think of anybody who could—I don't know, stack up, I guess. They're just being asses."

"Oh. I guess there are worse things they could call me."

A long stretch of time passed before Bah spoke again in a quiet voice, surprising Sandy by still being awake. "Did you like that guy? Tonight—that guy at the bar?"

Sandy didn't answer. She didn't exactly know how.

"Because it's fine if you did—I mean, obviously _I_ don't love it, but I'm not going to try and—"

"That wasn't it," she whispered, cutting him off. "It was just—weird. Can I be honest with you?"

Bah didn't respond for a few moments, apparently thinking about it. "Of course you can," he said.

"When I went outside to look for you and he was out there—I don't know, I was standing talking to him, it was like a part of me wanted to see what would happen if I just stayed there long enough. Now that I'm here away from it, I feel like it's pretty clear that that guy was kind of…" she paused, trying to find the word. "Predatory. He didn't care that I was with you."

"And you were into that?"

Robbie grumbled in his sleep and rolled over, breathing boozy breath into Sandy's face. She gently pushed him over onto his back. "I don't know. Sometimes I think I sabotage good things in my life." She had never said this out loud before, and it felt oddly therapeutic to have the words out in the world, even if Bah was the only one who heard them.

She saw Bah prop himself up on his elbows to look over at her. "Why do you think that is?"

Sandy exhaled loudly, rolling her head over to look at Bah. "I'm worried I don't deserve them," she said, in a voice that was barely a whisper.

The dim outline of Bah's face that was visible in the dark room gave away no clues as to what he was thinking. Then he reached over Robbie's sleeping form and grabbed Sandy's hand. "You do."

Sandy squeezed his hand but didn't respond, worried that she would start crying and wake Robbie up.


	12. Chapter 12

**BlurredHorizon -** Thank you for taking the time to review! I'm glad you're liking the story and everything, but the main reason I wanted to address your review is to give you a book recommendation. It's likely that, as a MOI fan, you've already read this one and I might be preaching to the choir here, but if you like Boys of Winter you _**have to**_ check out One Goal by John Powers and Art Kaminsky. Such a fun read—less journalistic than Coffey so it just reads more like a narrative. So, so good. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this update and that you don't mind how badly I fucked up and missed my moment to post my Halloween chapters.

* * *

 **Chapter 12 - October 27 - 31, 1979**

Will watched as Sandy folded up shirts and crammed them into the small suitcase he had lent to her. "I've mentioned this before, but you know you can stay here while they're here, right? You wouldn't have to talk to them or anything."

Their parents were due to arrive that evening, and Sandy was hurrying to get out of the house before they did. As the one bit of vindictiveness in which she allowed herself to indulge, she was taking the car for the week, which meant that they had to rent one at the airport. "In _this economy_?" Will had said, wringing his hands, but Sandy has reasoned that she needed it to get to work, and besides, it was _her_ car.

"It'll be okay," Sandy said. She tried to close the clasps on the stuffed suitcase and, finding it too full to close, climbed up on the bed and sat on it, holding it down while Will reached out and closed them. "Thanks. I appreciate you trying to make it easier, but trust me, I think the least painful way of doing this would be for me to just not be here. That way you guys can have a nice visit."

"I just don't know what I'm going to tell them when they ask where you are," he tried. "They obviously know that you _live_ here."

Sandy shrugged, hauling the suitcase off of the bed. "Tell them I didn't want to be here at the same time as them." She walked past him and into the hallway.

"Well, I'm obviously not going to tell them _that_ ," he said, following her out.

Jenny was sitting on the floor in the living room, on a patch of carpet covered in newspapers. She was tracing a jack o' lantern face onto a pumpkin while keeping one eye on the television, where _It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown_ was playing. "Are you heading out?" she asked.

"Yep. The plane landed an hour ago, so they should be getting here any minute," Sandy said, reaching out a hand to help Jenny to her feet. "I'll see you in a week."

Jenny gave her an awkward, one armed hug, being careful not to get pumpkin guts all over Sandy. "Call us if you need anything."

As Sandy was backing the car out of the driveway, an unfamiliar vehicle came driving down the street. "Oh, fuck," she whispered to herself, ducking her head a little as she passed it, catching a glimpse of her mother and father inside.

It was the closest she hoped to get to them during their stay.

Di had offered to have Sandy stay at her place while her parents were staying at Will and Jenny's, an arrangement that made the whole thing a lot easier, because Bah was on a week-long trip between games in Indianapolis and Flint and wouldn't be back until Halloween. He had called her the night before from his hotel room.

"The Big Visit, huh?" he had said, clearly unsure as to how to navigate the situation. "So, you'll be at Di's place all week?"

"Until next Friday, yeah," she said.

"What I should have done is just given you the keys to my apartment," he said. "You could have had the whole place to yourself until we got back."

Sandy shook her head. "You don't have to do that. I don't mind staying with Di. Besides, it's not _just_ your place. You can't just go around handing out keys to it."

This thought had apparently not occurred to Bah. "I guess that's right."

"And I doubt it would make Pav feel any warmer towards me if he came home and found that I ate all your food while you guys were gone."

Bah laughed. "Well, you've just talked me out of ever letting you stay there. What would you think about staying over for a few nights once we get back, though? I think we'll have some days off."

"Sounds like fun," Sandy had said, and so Bah had instructed her to bring her suitcase and come pick him up at the rink when he got back to town.

"I'll take you out for a nice dinner," he'd said.

When Sandy got to Di's house, her older sister, Beth, answered the door. "Hi?" she said, raising her eyebrows at Sandy.

"Is Di here? I'm supposed to be staying here for a few days."

Beth nodded and pulled the door open wider. "Oh, that's right." She held out a hand for Sandy to shake. "I'm Beth. I'm Di's sister."

Sandy shook her hand, frowning. "I know. We've met before—at the wedding?"

" Really?" Beth looked doubtful.

"Yes," Sandy said. "I was there with Di."

Di came around the corner. "You're here!" She grabbed Sandy's suitcase from her and dragged it down the hall. "C'mon, we'll get you set up in the guest room."

She lead Sandy into a bedroom with a view of their large backyard. "When I was a kid I always wanted to switch rooms and sleep in here, but my mom would always tell me that we wanted guests to have the best room." Di sat down heavily on the corner of the bed. "Lucky you, I guess."

"Lucky me," Sandy agreed. "You know, your sister just pretended she didn't know who I was."

"Did she?" Di giggled. "She's always trying stuff like that. That's supposed to make you wonder if you made a good enough impression on her—you know, so you'll work harder to make her remember you next time. She definitely knows who you are."

Sandy laughed. "I don't know if it had the desired effect—I was more confused than anything."

"You should do that to your folks if you run into them while you're here," Di said. "Did you see them at all before you left?"

Sandy shook her head. "They were pulling in just as I was leaving, and I think that's probably enough for this visit."

Di gave her a sympathetic look. "Run out of your own house. I can't even imagine."

While this sounded temptingly dramatic to Sandy, she shook her head again. "It wasn't like that."

The two of them chatted for a while before Di suddenly gasped and craned her neck to look at the clock. "What?" Sandy asked.

"I have a date tonight," Di said. "I can't believe I forgot."

Sandy raised her eyebrows. "With who?"

"Oh," Di said, waving a hand at her. "Peter. Nobody special. He's someone my sister knows from the U—he was always coming around to the house and after she turned him down he asked me out. We're going to a movie—maybe you should come."

"You want me to come with you on your date?"

Di shook her head. "No, of course not. But what you _should_ do is follow us at a distance and come join us if he turns out to not be any fun." She bounced off the bed and out of the room, motioning for Sandy to follow her down the hallway.

"Why don't you think he'll be fun?" Sandy asked.

"Well, he wasn't good enough for my sister, so I doubt he'll have much to offer _me_ ," Di said. "I figured it'd be nice to have someone pay for the ticket and the popcorn—I forgot you were coming to stay when I made these plans, otherwise I would have just gone with you."

Sandy froze, thinking about what movies were playing and what time of year it was. "Wait, wait. What are you seeing?"

It turned out, to Sandy's extreme disappointment, that Di had settled on _When a Stranger Calls_. She bought her ticket from the box office employee with a truly glum expression on her face, being careful to keep a few feet of distance between Di and Peter. He kept trying to put his arm around Di's shoulders but appeared to lose his nerve each time. Di, who was clutching a tub of popcorn in the crook of her elbow, was ignoring this.

The theater was fairly full—Sandy assumed that the movie had just recently come out, and so people were excited to see it, for reasons that she couldn't fully comprehend. Unable to find a seat a reasonable distance away from Di and Peter, she settled into the seat directly behind them. Di turned and offered her popcorn to Sandy when he wasn't looking, and Sandy filled up the cup holder in the seat after carefully lining it with napkins.

"So, what do you do?" Peter asked. He continued to almost lift his arm to put it around Di.

"I work at a grocery store," Di said. "How about you?"

"I'm at the U—didn't Beth tell you? Huh," Peter said, looking a little disappointed when Di shook her head. "Well, anyway, I'm doing my masters in political science."

"Oh, so you want to be a politician?"

Peter shrugged. "Maybe. I'm not sure how good I'd be at it—I've never been a good liar."

Di nodded. "Great." She giggled, adding, "maybe I'll get to vote for you for president someday."

He peered at her for a moment, not sure if Di was being cruel, and laughed in a relieved sort of way when he determined that she wasn't. "Wouldn't that be something?"

He looked like he wanted to continue talking, but the lights suddenly dimmed and someone near the back of the theatre made a loud shushing sound. Di put a finger to her lips and Peter nodded solemnly.

 _When a Stranger Calls_ was not a movie Sandy wanted to ever see again—not that she saw much of it, having spent much of the runtime with her hands pressed over her eyes. Several times, she caught the woman next to her looking at her with an annoyed expression, clearly confused as to why Sandy was there, seemingly alone, seeing a movie that she hated so much. Sandy had no answers.

She was able to distract herself a little by watching Di and Peter. At some point near the middle of the movie, Peter worked up the nerve to finally put his arm around Di, who snuggled up against him, still working on her popcorn. For all of Di's talk of not wanting to come on this date, she looked like she was enjoying herself. Sandy was glad for this, but the thought that perhaps she didn't necessarily need to be there as a safety net occurred to her several times as she snuck looks at the screen through her fingers.

When the lights finally came up and the credits rolled, Sandy carefully tailed Di and Peter into the lobby. As they got out onto the street, Di turned, looked at Sandy, and waved.

"Sandy? Oh my God, were you in there?"

This hadn't really been a part of the plan. Sandy, thinking that it would be very surprising if Peter hadn't seen her skulking around the entire time, grinned and joined them as they walked. "Hi—yeah, I was. Can't believe I didn't see you. What did you think?"

"We _loved_ it," Di said, reaching out and grabbing Peter's forearm. He jumped like he had just been shot. "What about you?"

"Well, you know me and scary movies," Sandy said. "I could barely watch." She could see the obvious question of why she was there forming on Peter's face, so she changed the subject. "Who's your friend?"

Di tugged on Peter's forearm. "This is Peter. He's a friend of my sister's, and he was nice enough to bring me tonight. Peter, this is Sandy."

Sandy and Peter shook hands. "Good to meet you," Peter said.

"We were just thinking of going and getting something to eat," Di told her. "You should come."

Both Sandy and Peter both looked over at Di, seeking confirmation that this was okay. "Sure," Sandy said after a moment. "As long as you don't mind," she added, nodding at Peter.

Peter looked like he _did_ mind, but he shrugged. Maybe he understood what was going on, Sandy thought.

The three of them walked to a restaurant about a block away from the movie theater. When they got inside, Peter hustled to get ahead of the girls so he could sit on one side of the booth, apparently hoping that Di would sit in his side. She slid in on the seat next to Sandy, and his face dropped a little. It felt to Sandy like they were interrogating him.

"So," Sandy said, as a waiter brought them glasses of water. "How do you two know each other?"

"We met through her sister," Peter said. "I have a class with her and I was trying to get to know Beth, but I found that I liked Di a lot better."

This was definitely not the story as Sandy knew it, but she nodded anyway. After all, she was the one who had hijacked their date. "What's Beth's major?" she asked Di.

"She's pre-law. I know," she added, seeing the surprised expression on Sandy's face.

"I've known _of_ Beth for a while," Peter explained, somewhat ominously. "Just because we shared some classes being in similar programs. She was—and still is—pretty uninterested in me."

Di giggled. "Well, that's her loss. He's going to be president one day, you know," she said, looking over at Sandy.

Sandy grinned. "Congratulations." She was a little confused. The agreement had been that she would step in and be a buffer if the date was going badly, but the impression she got from Di and Peter was just the opposite. Di seemed to be really enjoying Peter's company, and Peter seemed like he couldn't believe his luck.

After they had finished eating, Peter excused himself to use the washroom and once he had gone, Di turned to Sandy. "So what do you think?"

"He's nice," Sandy said. "He seems like a grown up. _And_ he seems like he really likes you. What do _you_ think?"

"I don't know." Di looked like she was struggling to find the correct words. "I can understand why Beth didn't like him, but he seems—I don't know. Different from what I thought he would be."

Sandy frowned. "Is that a good thing? I kind of thought you weren't going to blow my cover unless you were having a bad time."

Di shook her head, staring down at the table. "No, no it's not that. I guess I just confused myself because I was so ready to not like him, and—"

"Should I go?" Sandy asked. Di looked up from the table, startled. "If you want me to stay, of course I'll stay. But this seems like it's going well and having me here would just make it awkward, wouldn't it?"

"Um," Di said, glancing in the direction of where the bathrooms were. "Yes. Yeah, maybe you'd better just meet me at home. I won't be too much longer."

They scooted out of the booth and Sandy stood. She said, quickly before she lost her nerve, "you know, maybe the fact that your sister didn't like him is a good thing," and then fled like a coward before Di could respond.

When Di came back to the house about an hour later, Sandy was sitting on the couch in the living room with Beth, not speaking and watching an episode of _Three's Company_. Beth had given up pretending not to know who Sandy was. Di banged through the front door and stopped at the sight of them. "What are you guys doing?"

"Having the time of our lives," Beth said. She turned to look at Di. "How was your date? Did he bore you to tears?"

"Something like that," Di said. "Sandy, can we talk?"

Di made sure that Beth was still safely sitting on the couch before closing her bedroom door and turning to Sandy. She sat on the bed and hugged a pillow to herself. "So, I thought about what you said about Beth."

Sandy leaned up against the wall and sank down into a sitting position. "I'm sorry. I was out of line. I know that you really look up to her and it's not my—"

"No," Di cut her off, shaking her head. "I think you were right. She goes on a lot of dates with a lot of this one specific type of guy, and it's—well, of course she's allowed to do whatever she wants, but none of them are actually worth her time. And tonight, with Peter—I couldn't understand what it was about him that she wouldn't have liked. He's _such_ a sweet guy. And I think that's what it is. He's just a nice person."

"Yeah." Sandy considered her words carefully before continuing to speak. "You know you don't have to be exactly like her, right?"

Di flopped over onto her back and hung her head over the side of the bed, regarding Sandy upside down. "I know. Maybe it's different for you because you don't have a sister, but I always kind of felt like I should model my life after hers. She seems like she has it all figured out. But I'm noticing now that maybe that isn't true." She frowned. "It's very confusing."

Sandy smiled at her and shrugged. "There's probably more than one way of having it all figured out. I mean, hopefully there is. And besides, you seemed like you were having fun tonight. I think that's worth something."

"I was," Di said, a thoughtful expression on her face. "You know what? I think I want to see him again. And I don't think that you'll need to follow us." She grinned. "Which means you probably won't have to see any more horror movies for a little while."

"Oh, dammit," Sandy said, laughing.

Four days later, Sandy pulled her car into a parking spot on the street in front of the Roy Wilkins Auditorium in downtown St. Paul, where Bah had instructed her to pick him up. Her re-packed suitcase was in the back seat, and at Bah's somewhat odd request, she was dressed in comfortable clothes.

"So I shouldn't wear a costume?" Sandy had asked.

"Well, not unless you can find a very comfortable costume. We're not going anywhere fancy," he said. "Just dress down—like you're going to spend a night at home."

Sandy watched as the bus drove into the parking lot, peering at the figures exiting it and trying to pick Bah out by the shape of his head. They all grabbed bags of equipment from the bottom of the bus and went into the rink, probably to hang the gear up in their dressing room. Sandy watched as the bus driver slammed the bottom compartment of the bus closed, got back inside, and turned the huge vehicle around, pulling onto the street and disappearing. Then she stared dazedly out the window for a few minutes, alternately watching traffic and people, some of whom were wearing low maintenance, work appropriate costumes like capes or witches hats.

Someone suddenly knocked on Sandy's passenger-side window. She jumped and turned to look, seeing someone whose name she could not remember. He bent over so she could see his face in the window and waved. Sandy unlocked the door, and the guy leaned into the car. "Do you mind if I catch a ride home with you guys? Bah mentioned you were waiting out here. Everybody's hanging around and having a beer but I'm so beat and I didn't drive here when we left."

"Yeah," Sandy said. "Just as a reminder, though—what's your name?"

The guy grinned. "There's kind of a lot of us, huh? I'm Dave Christian." He pulled the back door of the car open and tossed a duffel bag inside before getting in himself. "We met that night when you came to our game," he said. He leaned his head back against the seat and yawned. "Hey, is it okay if I just close my eyes for a minute while we wait? I'm not trying to be rude or anything."

She shook her head. "No, I don't mind." A minute or two passed as they sat silently, waiting. "Was Bah on his way out when you—?" She was interrupted by someone knocking on her driver-side window, making her jump again. Bah laughed and waved at her through the glass and then motioned for her to open the door.

"Can I drive?" he asked, peering into the car and frowning at the sight of Dave Christian, who was dozing against the back seat window.

Sandy blinked. "Why?"

Bah shrugged. "I just need to wake myself up. A little drive will do me good. C'mon, here we go." He waved his hands at Sandy and she slid across the front seat to the other side of the car, bewildered. Bah threw his bag into the back seat with Dave, got in the car, and theatrically smacked himself on both cheeks a few times before turning the ignition on. "Also, why is Koho here? Are you two-timing me?"

They both glanced into the back seat to see what Dave's reaction to this would be, but he was fast asleep. "He wasn't kidding," Sandy said, turning back to face front. "He really _was_ tired. He said he didn't want to wait for another ride home, so I said I'd take him. How was the game and your flight and everything?"

Bah gave her a thumbs up and started to pull out of the parking lot. He looked oddly distracted and seemed to be throwing concerned glances at the traffic. "We beat them 15-0, and the flight was good. Hey, whose full tank of gas is this?" he asked, pointing at the odometer.

"What do you mean?"

"Did _you_ buy it or did Will?"

"I did," Sandy said slowly, frowning. "Why?"

He shrugged. "Do you mind if I take you somewhere tonight? Do you work tomorrow or the next day?"

Sandy shook her head. "I don't work until Saturday morning. Where are we going—can you slow down, please?" Her head hit the back of the seat as Bah stomped on the gas, sending them speeding out onto the street.

"Sorry." He looked over at her and grinned. "We kind of have to make good time for this to not be an absolutely awful idea."

"What does that mean? Where are we _going_?" Sandy asked, and Dave snorted in his sleep in the back seat.

Bah glanced into the back seat, bared his teeth at her, and then muttered something under his breath that sounded an awful lot like, "South Dakota."

Sandy gaped at him. "Why would we go to South Dakota?"

He shrugged. "I have three days off before we have to be back for practice. Let's go somewhere together."

"And of all the places, you figured somewhere in South Dakota was the best choice?"

"You'll see." Bah grinned at her. "It'll be fun, I promise."

"Okay, but—" Sandy jabbed her thumb in the direction of the back seat. "What about—?"

Bah made a dismissive sound and waved his hand at her. "He'll get over it. We really don't have time to mess around with going back to the apartment tonight, is the thing. It's his fault for trying to bum a ride off of you." He reached behind him and whacked his teammate on the leg a few times. "Right, Koho? You don't mind if we take a quick trip out of state for a day or two, do you?"

"Huh?" Dave jerked awake. "What?"

"We're going to South Dakota tonight and tomorrow. Are you okay with that?"

Dave Christian reached for his bag and pressed it against the window as a pillow. "Yeah. Yeah, we live there. It's fine."

Bah and Sandy turned to stare at each other. "See?" Bah said. "It's fine, he says. And he's right, we _do_ live there. He'll probably just be happy to be home. Can I please just do something nice for you?" he asked, noticing the deep frown on Sandy's face. "If it's the money for the gas that's bothering you, I can pay you back."

She shook her head. "It isn't that. I don't like that you're not telling us where we're going. It feels like you're going to murder us."

He scoffed. "Why are you so fixated on that? I don't know if this makes you feel any better, but I'm definitely not _planning_ on murdering you out there. Koho might kill _me_ , but we don't know that yet."

The car fell silent for a while as Sandy considered this. Finally, she told him, in a flat voice, "I'd kind of like to know where we're going."

Bah heaved a loud sigh and nodded his head in the direction of his bag in the back seat. "Grab that for me, would you?" Sandy pulled the bag into the front. Bah batted her hands away when she tried to open it. He held the steering wheel with his knees, unzipped the bag, and pulled out an old and battered-looking road map of the north central states. Then he shook it at Sandy until she took it from him.

She saw, once the map was unfolded and flattened out on her lap, that he had marked out a path in pen, starting in St. Paul and ending in... "Beresford? What's in Beresford?"

"Can you just _please_ take something on faith, for once?" Bah groaned. "God. You're giving me indigestion."

Sandy continued to study the map. "How long do you think it'll take us to get there?"

Bah shrugged, continuing to go much faster than the speed limit. "It'll take us less a little more than four hours if we make good time." He looked over at her as she folded the map sullenly and placed it back into his bag. "Are you going to be good company or am I going to have to wake up poor Koho?"

"Does anyone know where we're going?"

" _Yes_. I told Buzzy and a couple of other guys. The map is actually Pav's. He had it in the bottom of his suitcase for some reason and he let me draw out our flight plan on it."

Sandy rested her elbow against the door laid her chin on her fist. "Okay. I just don't want anyone to think that we kidnapped Dave. He definitely didn't agree to come."

"Sure he did. He loves South Dakota. You can't shut him up about the place."

They continued driving like that for about an hour as he drove them out of the city and onto the highway, with Sandy trying to glean some kind of explanation out of Bah, and Bah deftly avoiding saying anything specific. After a while Sandy fell silent and Bah gave up trying to engage her. Eventually, Bah had to swerve the car to avoid hitting a large branch that was laying across the road and Dave Christian was jostled awake. He sat up, stretching and yawning. "Sorry about that, I didn't mean to knock out completely..." Dave stopped talking and looked at his surroundings, which were, at that point, a somewhat remote four-lane highway stretching endlessly into the Minnesotan countryside. "Where are we?"

Bah glanced at him in the rear view mirror. "Probably a few minutes outside of St. Peter. Why, do you need to stop and go to the washroom or something? We're making good time."

It seemed to take Dave a moment to let this information sink in. The matter-of-fact way that Bah had answered his question seemed to put any concerns he had at ease, but not for long. "Wait, what?" He burst out suddenly as they passed a sign indicating that they were, in fact, on the outskirts of St. Peter, Minnesota. "Why are we out here?"

"Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but we're going to Beresford tonight," Sandy told him.

"Beresford?"

"South Dakota."

Dave sat up straight and stared out the window. "You can't be serious. Are you serious? Why didn't you say you weren't going home?"

Sandy shook her head. "I didn't know. We're an hour out of Minneapolis, so just get comfortable. And don't bother asking questions, Bah's doing this thing where he's being very mysterious and thinking it's cute."

Bah shot her a look. "Thank God you're up, Koho. Should we pull over and put the raincloud in the back seat and you can come sit up here?"

"This is _my car_!"

Dave put his hands on the top of his head and groaned. "How long are we going to be gone? My parents are supposed to be coming the day before our game on Sunday."

"That'll be fine," Bah said. "We're coming home on Friday afternoon."

"Oh, good." Dave relaxed against the seat. "Can I ask why we're going to Beresford in particular?"

Bah motioned for Sandy to hand him the map. "I'm trying to do something nice for _this one_ ," he said, jabbing his thumb in the direction of Sandy. "She'll appreciate it when we get there. Hopefully."

Dave unfolded the map and traced the line that Bah had drawn with his finger. "So I'm a hostage on a very expensive date?"

"Basically, yeah. I'm sure you'll have fun too. Think of all the sights you'll get to see," Bah said, gesturing grandly with his hand at the wall of trees to their left. "Check on the map, Koho. You can't see it because of the trees, but the river is right there."

"Neat," said Dave.

Sandy craned around in her seat to stare at him. "Are you really not mad? You only get a certain number of days off, and we're just hijacking them."

Dave grinned. "Well, I'm mostly just excited to see what you're gonna do to Bah. Why not just tell us what's in South Dakota?"

Bah sighed. "Am I the only person in the entire world who likes surprises? _Fine_. Okay, so do you remember a long time ago, we were talking at the track and you said you wanted to go to Europe at some point? Remember how you said you wanted to go to Paris?" He paused and looked over at Sandy.

"You mean, way back in the summer? Why do you remember that?"

He tapped a finger on his forehead. "I remember everything. Got a mind like a steel trap. So, I mentioned this to a couple of the boys the other night while we were on the bus coming back from our game in St. Louis, because we passed through a city that was actually called Paris in Missouri." He gestured with his head at the map spread across Dave's knees in the back seat. "Now, we're obviously not driving all the way to Missouri. Even I'm not that crazy. So I borrowed this map from Pav and I've been doing some studying for the past little while. It turns out there's actually quite a few towns called Paris out there, but the ones that are close to Minneapolis aren't really towns, so there isn't much to see."

"How do you even know that?"

"Magic told me," he replied, shrugging. "There are some in Wisconsin. Unincorporated communities. Boring. Anyway, I got to talking about this with Christoff, and he told me that he knew a guy from Beresford, South Dakota from school or hockey or whatever, and this guy said that his hometown was actually _called_ Paris in the early days, and they changed it later on. To _Beresford_. Isn't that wild? Anyway, that's why we're going. I'm taking you to Paris."

Dave shook his head when Bah had finished talking. "Well, now one of us is gonna have to fuck him," he said to Sandy. "That's the sweetest thing I've ever heard."

Sandy didn't respond, just turned her head and looked out the window to hide the smile that had spread across her face. Bah saw it, but he said nothing.


	13. Chapter 13

**Anonymous Reviewer** \- I'm assuming you're BlurredHorizon who reviewed before, but thank you for saying nice things! I truly appreciate it. Let me know how you're liking One Goal (which I paid _**THIRTY DOLLARS PLUS SHIPPING**_ for when I got it, so I feel your pain) if you wind up picking it up. _You_ are the one who continues to be just the best. Please do me a favour and pretend that it's still Halloween time and enjoy this Halloween special chapter.

* * *

 **Chapter 13 - October 31, 1979**

They passed into South Dakota at around 7:30, mostly thanks to Bah's somewhat theatrical driving style. Dave had passed out again in the back seat, and despite Bah having threatened to make Sandy switch spots with him, she remained in the front.

"You're not still mad at me, are you?" They had been silent for about a half an hour, watching the countryside whip past under the quickly darkening sky.

Sandy shook her head. "I was never mad at you. I just wasn't thrilled that we were going somewhere without knowing why. Sorry."

"Nah, _I'm_ sorry," he said. "I kind of got caught up in the grand gesture of the whole thing and I didn't really give it a lot of thought. Koho really took the whole thing in stride, though, huh? I figured for sure he'd be pissed."

"He did," Sandy agreed. "I guess you picked the right guy to kidnap—maybe he really does love South Dakota." She sighed. "I wonder what Will's gonna say when he finds out we did this."

Bah rolled his eyes and scoffed. "He's—" he started to answer, but cut himself off by turning the volume on the radio up. Billy Joel was singing "Only the Good Die Young," and Bah turned away from the road for a moment to face Sandy, his hand clutching an imaginary microphone. "You say your brother told you all that I could give you was a reputation," he sang, incorrectly and loudly. "He never cared for me, but did he ever say a prayer for me?"

Dave snapped awake. "C'mon," he said, rubbing his face. "Let a guy sleep."

Bah laughed and turned the radio down again. "Sorry, buddy. We're about twenty minutes out of Beresford, on the bright side. You'll be able to sleep for real soon."

"Do you know where we're going to stay when we get there?"

"Not really." Bah shrugged. "They've gotta have a hotel there, right? If not, we can camp out in a parking lot or something. I'm kidding," he said, grinning at Sandy's horrified face. "There's a hotel. I looked into it. You're gonna have to sleep on the floor, though, Koho. Maybe we'll be able to get you a cot or something."

"That's fair," Dave said. "You didn't plan to have me with you guys, and I _insisted_ on coming."

They pulled into the parking lot of the first motel they encountered off the main highway, one with a brightly lit neon sign just before nine. They all piled out of the car, stretching stiff limbs. "Beresford's finest lodgings," Bah said, gesturing at the door leading to the office.

There was a balding man with circular glasses sitting behind the front desk, looking like he was about to fall asleep. A bowl of Halloween candy sat on the desk. He looked up at them as they entered. "Hi there," he said, and when he smiled, he revealed a mouthful of vampire teeth. "How can I help you?"

Sandy and Dave stood back while Bah approached the counter like he was their father. Bah rested his elbows on the counter and grinned at the man. "We're looking for your least expensive room for two nights."

The man raised his eyebrows. "Two nights, huh? Are you all here for business? We don't usually get young people staying for more than a night to rest up. Not that I'm complaining," he added, smiling at the three of them.

"Oh, we just wanted to take a trip somewhere quiet," Bah told him. "Get away from the city, you know?"

If the man didn't understand this impulse, he made no indication of this. He considered them thoughtfully, drumming his fingers against his chin. "Tell you what," he said. "I'll go thirty bucks for two nights on a one-bed, and we'll get you a cot. How's that strike you?"

"That strikes me pretty well," Bah said, reaching into his pocket for his wallet. Sandy made a move to come join him at the counter to help pay, but he waved a hand at her without turning around. "How's your concierge service at this place?"

The man threw his head back and laughed, looking like the most jovial Count Dracula Sandy had ever seen. "I guess you're looking at it," he said. "You know, normally I'd say you're out of luck in this town after five on a Wednesday, but, it being Halloween and all, there's a little more going on tonight." He glanced at the clock and pulled out a piece of paper. "My niece—she's a teacher—her and her students are doing spooky hayride tours out at the old Wilson farmhouse, if that's your interest."

While the man drew a rough sketch of where exactly one could find the Wilson farmhouse, Bah glanced back over his shoulder and grinned at Sandy. "Your favourite," he said.

"That should be all you need," the man said, setting down his pen and pushing the paper towards Bah. "They're supposedly out there until midnight, so you have plenty of time. After that, you can go grab a beer at a couple of places," he pulled the paper back and scribbled down some names. "You can come visit in the morning if you want some daytime activities."

Bah thanked the man, folded up the paper, and accepted their room key. "Sounds like fun, doesn't it?" He elbowed Sandy when they were outside, walking along the line of rooms, looking for theirs.

"We're not—we aren't actually going out to that farm, are we?"

"Of course we are," Bah said. "What, you don't think Paris has ghosts? It's _full of them_." They stopped in front of their room and he unlocked it. The room itself was very small—Dave's cot wasn't in there yet, but Sandy couldn't picture where it would fit in the small room when it was. Bah grabbed Sandy's suitcase and tossed it on the bed. "All in favour of doing the hayride, hands up," he said, and raised his hand.

A second later, Dave raised his. "What?" he asked, when Sandy gave him an exasperated look. "I didn't come all the way out here to stay in the room all night, and I can't go drinking with you guys. This is the most fun I'll have in Beresford."

Bah raised his eyebrows. "If we _survive_."

"Great," said Dave.

It took them a while to find the old Wilson farmhouse, owing to the fact that the old man at the hotel was not a freelance cartographer. He had left whole roads out of his drawing, leading Bah to have to reverse Sandy's car out of a field and a few farm yards that were not their destination. By the time they got there, the sun had fully set. They came upon a yard that looked decidedly spookier than the others, with paper ghosts hanging from the trees and jack o' lanterns lining the driveway.

As the three of them got out of the car, it occurred to Sandy that the spooky hayrides were probably just a local attraction, and they didn't get many people from out of town coming to participate. People who were standing around in groups talking paused at the sight of them and stared. The leaves crunched under their feet as they approached what they assumed to be the starting area, where a woman dressed as a witch sat in front of a cauldron. Upon closer inspection, Sandy saw that the bottom was lined with cash.

"Good evening," the witch said in an affected, witchy voice. "What brings you strangers to this haunted place?"

"The—uh—the hayride?" Bah said. "We're staying at the hotel and the man at the front desk told us about this."

"Oh—Uncle Bruce did that? That's _nice_ ," the witch said, lapsing into a normal speaking voice. She cleared her throat and continued, spookily, "pay the toll and you'll be in for the fright of your life! It's pay by donation," she added, normally, gesturing to the cauldron. "Whatever you feel like paying."

The three of them dug in their pockets and threw some money in. The witch cackled loudly, startling Sandy. She moved backwards and stepped on Dave's toes.

"The toll has been paid!" The witch stood up and waved her arms. The people who were standing around, apparently uninterested after seeing this several times throughout the night, paid them no mind. She waved her arms around again theatrically and a man on a horse came riding up out of the bushes and stopped beside them, pulling a small trailer. "Climb aboard, if you dare," the witch said. Sandy felt Bah tug on her arm excitedly. They piled onto the trailer, which was littered with plastic spiders and cobwebs in addition to the scratchy, somewhat damp-smelling hay.

"Do you think these are the last ones for the night, Kate?" The man riding the horse, who was wearing a long cape and had a mask of Frankenstein's monster sitting on top of his head, wiped some sweat from his forehead. "Everybody's getting tired out there waiting for people to show up."

The witch, Kate, apparently, frowned at the man. "We said we'd be out here until _midnight_ , and so that's when we'll be done. Tell me if those kids aren't being scary enough," she added to the three of them.

Dave grinned at them as the trailer started to move with a jerk. "Kinda ruins the mood a little bit, doesn't it?"

As they were pulled into a path through the trees, the man on the horse turned around and pointed to a flashlight that had been left lying in the hay. "Make sure nobody's following us," he said, and Sandy picked it up.

Knowing exactly what was about to happen, she took a deep breath and clicked the flashlight on. Both Bah and Dave were watching her with expectant grins on their faces as Sandy turned, eyes half closed in case she had to shut them in a hurry, and shone the light into the trees behind them. She let out a startled squeak as the light fell on a man standing just outside of the treeline, his white face paint and clothes streaked with fake blood. He stared after them for a few moments and then edged sideways into the trees.

As the horse pulled the trailer down the road through the trees, they could hear the sounds of people moving in the dark around them. It felt pretty clear to Sandy that letting her be the one to man the flashlight was a bad idea. She swung it around wildly at the sound of every snapping twig and eventually, she smacked the top of Bah's head with it. He wrestled it out of her hands. " _Okay_ , let's give somebody else a turn with this, huh?" He lazily drifted the light from side to side as the horse slowed to a stop in front of a small clearing in the trees.

"Do you guys hear something?" The man on the horse turned to look at them. "Listen. I think I hear someone coming."

Obediently, they all listened, Sandy staring stubbornly down at the hay they were sitting on. The sounds in the trees surrounding them sounded like they were coming closer. After a moment, Dave jumped next to her and laughed. "Whoa."

Bah nudged Sandy's leg. "Take a look."

Half-squeezing her eyes closed again, Sandy turned to look and jumped too, letting out another squeak. A person in a full werewolf costume was standing inches away from the trailer. He began howling and pawing at the trailer, pretending to try and crawl aboard. Dave giggled like a little boy as the werewolf tugged on his arm and howled in disappointment as the trailer lurched forward again.

The three of them turned to look back as they made their escape from the werewolf, who pursued them half-heartedly briefly before giving up and wandering into the trees. "I've never met a werewolf who was so slow on his feet," Dave said. "Pretty spooky, huh, Deb?" He dug an elbow into her side.

They carried on down the road for a few more yards before the horse slowed them to a stop again. The man turned and frowned at them. "The three of you aren't from here, are you?" They shook their heads and he nodded. "Didn't think I recognized you. Where are you from?"

"Just outside Minneapolis," Bah replied.

The man, who was clearly revving up to do something related to the hayride, frowned at this but didn't comment on it. He continued, "well, then I guess you wouldn't know the story about this property. I don't think it would have made the news all the way in Minnesota."

The man climbed off the horse, keeping a hold on the reins. He stretched his back and regarded them seriously. "Now, this is all true," he said, in the way that people do when they are about to tell a truly false story. "You can ask people around town about it, but none of them will say anything, because they don't like to talk. Not about this, anyway. You know?"

The three of them nodded.

"Right. So, this farmyard has been deserted since the 20s because of what happened, but before that Tom Wilson and his family lived here. Tom was one of the folks from town who went over to fight in the war. And when he came back, he didn't have the use of one of his legs anymore. He had a wife, but she died of pneumonia while he was gone, so all he had left was his son, a fella named Fred." The man propped one leg up on the trailer and cleared his throat. "Fred and his daddy didn't really get along, and it only got worse because Tom was so needy since he couldn't really get around anymore. He was _obsessed_ with having a fire going all the time in the fireplace, so he had Fred running out here into these trees to get firewood at all hours. 'Firewood, boy,' he'd say. It was—do you hear that?" The man stopped talking and everyone listened again.

All around them, coming from about five different spots in the trees, they heard the sounds of voices whispering, " _firewood, boy_ ," and Sandy thought, even as she felt a shiver run up her spine, that the effect would have been better if they'd been saying something spookier.

Apparently not having heard the voices himself, the man shook his head. Then, he took a step forward, reached down, and unhooked the trailer from the horse. Bah opened his mouth to say something, but the man cut him off by continuing to speak. "Must have been the wind. Anyway, Fred got tired of it after a while and so when Tom woke him up in the middle of the night one night to go get wood, he chopped his father up with the axe." He paused for dramatic effect, and the trees around them were completely silent. "After nobody heard anything from anyone out here in a few days, people came around to make sure everyone was okay, and that's when they found Tom. But no one ever saw Fred again. They say that on quiet nights out here, you can hear him in the trees, chopping up more firewood for his daddy."

In the heavy silence following the end of this story, the man stared at them impressively. Then Dave asked, "so then, why was there a werewolf?"

There was a _thunk_ as something hit a tree behind them. Everyone turned to look and saw the blood-covered man from the beginning of the ride, standing with an axe sunk into a tree. They all jumped as their driver let out a scream. "Run!" he shouted, and climbed back on the horse. "Run for your lives back to the yard! There's a path in the trees on your left!"

As the man took off, galloping away on the horse, Bah threw his hands up. "Are you _kidding_ me? We're probably half a mile away from the car," he called after him. The man in the trees, ostensibly the ghost of Fred Wilson, had disappeared. Bah let out a groan and climbed off the trailer, holding out a hand to help Sandy off. "There had better be some terrifying things in those trees," he said.

Dave hopped to the ground. "I guess that's what this is for," he said, and grabbed the flashlight that Bah had set aside. He turned it on and shone it into the trees to their left, revealing the path they were supposed to take back to the yard. "What if we just walked back on _this_ road?" he asked in a loud voice, addressing the trees and pointing back the way they'd come. "That would make the most sense."

"I guess you don't want to get your _fucking_ money's worth," a distant voice in the trees shouted back.

"Mmm," Bah said. "Very spooky."

The wind had picked up a little, and Sandy shivered. "Can we just start going? I'm obviously not—you know—excited about it," she said, as Bah raised his eyebrows at her. "It's just better than staying here and freezing."

Bah unzipped his jacket and draped it around Sandy's shoulders, patting her absently on the back. "Okay, okay—let's go. Koho, you go first because you have the flashlight. I'll go last," he added, tugging at the hem of his jacket on Sandy. "Just so nobody can grab ya."

The possibility of this hadn't really occurred to Sandy. She regretted hurrying them along as they stepped into the trees, being careful not to trip. Immediately Sandy noticed that there were people standing on the edges of the overgrown path, wearing all black and almost blending into the darkness. "There's—" she began, but one of the people looked up at her suddenly just as Dave passed over them with the flashlight. This person was wearing, bizarrely, a mask of Richard Nixon's face.

Bah also noticed this and stumbled a little. "Oh, Nixon's here," he said. "Him and the werewolf were friends of the Wilson family, probably."

"Maybe they were a family of werewolves," Sandy said, feeling less afraid wandering around in the dark with Bah behind her, cracking jokes.

"Who? The Nixons?" Dave asked.

"Maybe," Sandy and Bah said in unison.

"I mean, yeah," Dave said. "I guess that would explain a lot."

They heard another _thunk_ behind them and turned to again see Fred Wilson standing with his axe in a tree. The people surrounding the path all whispered, " _firewood, boy_ ," and he threw his head back and screamed at them.

"I'll kill you!" He yanked the axe out of the tree. "I'll kill all of you!"

Someone grabbed Sandy's shoulders from behind and even though she knew it was probably just a teenager in all black clothing, she screamed and the boys both jumped. A grin spread across Bah's face and he started to say something, but there was suddenly a downpour of plastic spiders raining down on them. "What does that have to do with the guy with the axe?" he shouted at the trees. Sandy started to giggle.

"You're _all dead_!" The ghost of Fred Wilson, apparently tired of waiting for them to run, took a step towards them, tripping a little in the thick underbrush.

As the three of them took off running through the trees with the axe-wielding man chasing them, Dave called back over his shoulder, "what do you think Herb would do if one of us broke our leg out here?"

"I think it would look a lot like this, actually," Bah replied, ducking to avoid being hit in the face with a branch.

They ran for what seemed like a lot longer than it should have been, and Sandy wondered if the path had been deliberately chosen because it took the scenic route back to the yard. She looked back over her shoulder at the stumbling man covered in fake blood coming after them and was unable to hold back a shout of laughter. It was as if a floodgate had opened. Soon the three of them were laughing so hard that they had slowed down considerably, causing Fred Wilson to have to slow down as well so as to not actually catch them.

Eventually Dave burst through the treeline, stumbling and almost falling into the well-lit clearing where they had started. The crowd of people standing around applauded weakly. Sandy, Bah, and Dave stood in a small circle, bent over their knees and still cackling. "... Richard _Nixon_ ," Bah wheezed, and a moment later they had all sat down on the grass, their laughter echoing around the farmyard.

After a moment, the witch from the beginning approached them. "Did you have fun?" Sandy got the impression from her tone that _fun_ had not been the overall goal.

Dave stood and pulled Sandy to her feet. "It was great," he said. "I thought it was just great."

Sandy nodded her agreement. "Everyone did a great job, really. It was—"

"Great," Bah finished for her. He got up and dusted grass and dirt off of Sandy's back. "Really spooky. Can we give you more money? Where's your cauldron?"

Kate the witch looked skeptical, but accepted additional money from them without comment. "Hope you all have a happy Halloween," she said. "You might have time to go and grab a beer before the bar closes. The nightlife here isn't as good as it must be in _Minneapolis_ ," she said, shooting a withering glance, oddly, at Dave.

He shrugged. "I wouldn't know."

As they pulled out of the yard, Bah let out another cough of laughter. "They should take that show on the road. I'll bet there are artsy types that would just _love_ it."

Although they all decided that they would try to sneak Dave into the bar by pretending that he had forgotten his wallet, their plans were dashed by the fact that the bar a few doors down from their hotel was closed. However, when they got back to the room, they found Dave's cot waiting, along with a six pack of beer. There was a note next to the bottles that said, _from the concierge_.

"What _service_ ," Bah said, opening one of the bottles and handing it to Sandy. "We're definitely bringing our kids here on our next family vacation."

Sandy accepted the beer without comment, looking down at the floor and hoping that Bah and Dave didn't notice that it nearly slipped out of her hand when Bah spoke.


	14. Chapter 14

**CalaisForever** \- You're very kind! Thanks for reading!

This'll be the last update I post until the New Year rolls around, so I hope everybody has a great holiday season with lots of sparkle and cheer and everything that a holiday season is supposed to have.

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 **Chapter 14 -** **November 1, 1979**

Sandy woke up with a start as Dave Christian rolled over and dug his elbow into her back. It took her a moment to remember where she was and why she was sandwiched between Dave and Bah.

Dave had tossed and turned violently on the squeaky cot provided by the front desk for about a half an hour after they had all agreed to try and sleep. Eventually he had sat up in a huff and stared over at the bed where Sandy and Bah were also attempting to sleep.

"Would it be weird if I came over there with you guys?"

"It sure would, Koho," Bah had said, barely raising his head off the pillow.

It seemed like Dave had been hoping to get this answer, because he launched into a long speech that he had clearly been writing in his head while he thrashed around on the uncomfortable cot about he didn't see why _he_ had to be the one who slept on the worst bed, _he_ hadn't even wanted to be there, and _he_ had an obligation to be in good condition for the game on the weekend, and if he messed up his back sleeping on a rotten cot, then it would be—

Eventually Sandy sat up. "Enough. Come over here, Dave. I'll sleep on the cot." She'd started to get to her feet, but Bah had grabbed her by the arm.

"No you won't. Nobody _has_ to sleep on the cot. If you wanna come sleep with us on our big trip, Koho, go right ahead."

And so Sandy had stayed, and Dave, seemingly having no issues with sleeping with them on their big trip, flopped down on Sandy's other side and dropped off within a matter of minutes. Sandy had slept, too, until she was jolted awake by Dave's elbow.

She craned her neck to see over Bah's sleeping form, squinting at the clock on the nightstand. Seeing that it was almost three, Sandy flopped her head back down and groaned into the pillow.

After she had tossed around for a while, wondering how she had ever fallen asleep before in such tight quarters, Bah rolled over and threw his arm around her, pulling her close and whispering into her hair. "Hey. You're keeping everybody up," he said.

"Sorry." Sandy lay there for a moment and then wriggled her way out from under Bah's arm and slid down to the bottom of the bed. Then she grabbed her jacket, slipped her feet into Bah's shoes and quietly went out the door.

It was a clear, bright night, and the parking lot was lit by a combination of buzzing fluorescent lights and the moon. She settled down on a bench facing the highway and sighed, breathing a cloud into the air.

Several minutes passed while Sandy sat, hypnotised by the cars driving past on the highway and the quiet nighttime sounds of the small town. Then Bah came out in sock feet, running his hands through his hair. He stretched, yawned, and looked over at her. "Why'd you take my shoes?"

She smiled. "They're easy to put on. Sorry."

He reached back into the room and fished Dave's shoes out and then sank down next to her on the bench, forcing them onto his feet. "Couldn't sleep?" he asked. Sandy shook her head. "What's on your mind?"

"Nothing, really," Sandy said. She shrugged. "Dave woke me up."

"Mmm," Bah said, nodding. "I'm really going to have to have a talk with him when we get back about how much he forces himself into the time I spend with you."

Sandy laughed. "Would you? He's been just awful."

Bah reached for her hand and squeezed it, and they sat in comfortable silence for a while. Then Bah shifted a little on the bench and cleared his throat. "You didn't—uh—you didn't like it when I made that joke about bringing our kids here, did you?"

Thinking to herself that she needed to look into taking a course on how to avoid showing every emotion she felt on her face, Sandy sighed. "That obvious, huh?"

He shrugged one shoulder at her. "I appreciate how easy you are to read. It levels the playing field a little bit." He glanced down at her and smirked. "Can I ask why you had that reaction? You know I was just joking, right?"

"I know," Sandy said. "It was just—" She grimaced. "It obviously wasn't a big deal. I don't want you to think that _I_ thought it was. Don't feel like you can't make jokes without me making a scene."

Bah snorted. "I won't. Consider it forgotten." He squeezed her hand again and fell silent.

After a few more minutes passed, Sandy said, "thank you for bringing me here, Bah. It's been a lot of fun."

"Yeah?" He grinned at her. "I was worried maybe you'd think it was dumb."

"No way," she said. "I think this is probably the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me." She leaned her head over onto his shoulder. "It was a weird week, so I definitely needed this."

Bah sighed. "The Big Visit," he said.

"Yeah."

"And so you—" he hesitated, apparently unsure how to ask his question. "So you weren't—you didn't want to—? Not at all?"

Sandy shook her head. "Nope."

"Hmm." Bah sighed again, this time more heavily, lifting Sandy's head up and dropping it a little with his shoulder. "Sorry. Do you think you'll ever talk with them again?"

She raised her head and frowned as she thought about it. "I'll have to someday," she said. "The rest of my life is a long time to not talk to my parents, you know? I don't know if could ever have the same relationship with them as I did before, but maybe it could be something close to civilized again. I wouldn't want to have to be talk to them right now, though, because I'm sure Will has told them that I'm happy here. They would probably be just awful."

"Why wouldn't you want them to know that you're happy?"

"What's your relationship like with _your_ parents?"

Bah looked surprised by the question. "Well, pretty good, I think. Why?"

Sandy shrugged. "You probably wouldn't get it. I don't say that to be, you know, rude or anything," she added, seeing Bah's reaction, "I just don't see how you could understand feeling like I do if your parents have never disappointed you like mine did."

"Hmm," Bah said yet again.

Before they could lapse into another silence that would signal a change in subject, Sandy said, "can I tell you why I moved out here? I guess you should probably know."

The intensity of Bah's desire to know what he imagined to be a deep, dark secret was never more obvious than in that moment. He fidgeted with a hole in his pants with one hand and was suddenly squeezing Sandy's hand in his other one without realizing he was doing it. He cleared his throat once, twice. "Well—I mean—only if you want to tell me. It's up to you."

Sandy looked at him out of the corner of her eye and tried not to smile. "No, I think it's time I told you. It's just a long story, is all."

"Well, you know," Bah said, trying to regain his composure, "I think the best time to start a long story is at about four in the morning. You've got the whole day laid out in front of you. That's what I've always said."

She drew her legs up under herself on the bench and turned so she was facing him. Bah tried for a moment to do the same but, failing to find a comfortable position, settled for sitting turned awkwardly to the side with one leg crookedly balancing on the edge of the bench.

Sandy took a deep breath. "Okay. So, I guess the best place to start is the summer after I finished high school. I didn't want to go to college—at least not right away—so I convinced my dad to let me work for him to make a little money. He's a contractor—he has a little company that builds houses in Everett and in towns kind of in that area. And for basically my entire life, that was the most that I knew about what they did, because he made a big deal out of never talking about work or letting us meet any of the people that he works with."

Bah frowned. "How come?"

She shrugged. "I don't really know. His big excuse was that he didn't want me mixing with the kinds of people he worked with. But I always found that so stupid because, I mean, they were good enough to work with him, so why wouldn't they be good enough to meet his family? I met all of them that summer and for the most part, they were completely fine. But anyway, he had me doing little projects for him at job sites and driving around, picking things up, and I met this man who had been working with my dad since I was a little kid named Ray. You have heard of him." She paused, and Bah nodded again. "Ray and my dad have known each other since the summer that Ray finished high school. He's an engineer, but he'd come out and give recommendations on the structural details of the houses they were building. That's how I met him."

"So—" Immediately, Sandy knew the question that Bah was trying to ask, and she amused herself for a moment while he tried to find a delicate way of asking it. "So, this guy Ray… if he's been doing that for your dad since you were a kid… He was—? Well, I mean obviously he was quite a bit—"

"He's older than me by a fair bit, yeah."

"And so, this guy had known you since you were really young? Isn't that kind of—you know, kind of messed up?" Bah caught the look on Sandy's face a moment after he had spoken and started shaking his head. "I don't mean he's a creep or anything like that, I just wondered—you know, if he'd been around...?"

Sandy shook her head. "No, it wasn't like that. I mean, like I said, my dad kept that part of his life really separate from his home life, and so even though he was friends with Ray, I hadn't even heard of him before that summer. My mom _kind of_ knew him, but that was the most anybody had ever seen him." She shrugged. "Anyway, that was kind of _my job_ that summer; taking him to sites and unlocking doors for him when my dad was too busy. And he's this older, good-looking man who was polite and kind to me because he knew I had a crush on him, and that was basically the extent of it for a while." She shivered and zipped her jacket up. "Then around Christmas-time, one of the guys who worked with my dad had a bunch of people over and I went. And everything was going fine until this one guy started coming onto me, and I got flustered and uncomfortable and I left."

Bah snorted. "Hey, I think I know this story."

She grinned and elbowed him. " _Anyway_ , it was the middle of winter, but I started walking home. I was starting to realize that it was a really bad idea, and just as I was thinking that I should turn around and go back to call my parents, Ray pulled up in his car. He had been at this party for some reason, and he saw me leave and came after me. So he drove me home, and the whole way I sat in his car and cried—well—about boys, basically. About how that guy at the party was an ass and about how I didn't think I'd ever meet anybody. I had been drinking," she added, somewhat unnecessarily.

"No kidding."

"Right. So, since I was clearly having a moment, Ray said he was going to take me to get something to eat so he wouldn't have to drop me off at home looking like a mess. He took me to this little all-night diner, and we just m—" She paused, glancing over at Bah, who had started fidgeting again. "On a scale of one to ten, how interested are you in hearing this part of the story?"

"What, the part where you get together with the guy who seems like he's probably the love of your life?" Bah made a wishy-washy motion with his hand. "Three."

"Okay, fair enough," Sandy said. "Anyway, it took a while for me to convince him to have anything to do with me because he hated that I was so young. I guess I sort of did too." She propped her elbow up on the top of the bench and frowned.

"That's hard," Bah said.

She shrugged and nodded. "I mean, obviously he got over it, but I think I changed a lot about myself to try and get him to see me as an adult. I thought about that when I first started seeing you, you know. It was so different to spend time with someone who I didn't have to work so hard to find common ground with." Sandy frowned and shook her head, clearing it of the thought. "So anyway, obviously we had to keep it a secret because we thought that my dad would lose his mind if he found out. And we were right, because when he _did_ find out about around my birthday the year after, everybody went nuts and I was basically put on house arrest. I spent a few weeks cooped up at home and then on the night before Thanksgiving, Ray came to my window and told me that he didn't care what my dad said and that he wanted me to move in with him."

An eighteen-wheeler sped by on the highway, inexplicably honking its horn as it did, and Sandy fell silent. Once it had gone, Bah rubbed his face with his hands. "So, you were nineteen and moving in with your boyfriend who was, what, in his mid-fifties?"

She snorted. "I'm never going to tell you how old he _actually_ is. But yeah. It just seemed like the right thing to do. We thought my parents were being unreasonable. And so my family woke up on Thanksgiving, and my mom went into my room to get me and found that I had packed a suitcase and took off in the middle of the night. Will and Jenny were there," she said, seeing Bah about to ask how she knew this. "They came and dropped off some things I forgot and told me after that my mom was pretty distraught over it. But anyway, I moved into Ray's house with basically just a suitcase full of clothes and I lived there with him for a year and a half."

Bah exhaled, puffing out his cheeks. "And so that's it? That's the whole story?"

She let out a short laugh. "You wish. No, things went really well for over a year. Ray wasn't working with my dad anymore, obviously, but he still had a lot to do and I probably would have gone to community college in the fall, but then everything kind of went to shit."

"How's that?" Bah looked somewhat terrified of the answer.

"Well, for starters, I found out I was pregnant."

"Oh God."

"Yeah. Right." She cleared her throat. "And so, I was worried about it, but I couldn't say anything to Ray, because he started acting all of the sudden like his one true goal in life was to become a dad and I didn't want to make him think—I don't know. I just felt like nobody cared what _I_ wanted and I felt really alone. People I knew from high school were already having kids and were married and everything, but I didn't think I was ready and Ray was such an _adult_ that I didn't think he'd get it." Sandy sighed. "So, I had a little lapse of judgement and called my mom."

Bah leaned forward and put his face in his hands. "Oh, _my God_."

" _Yeah_. I got her on the phone and she said all kinds of really terrible things that I guess she'd been wanting to say ever since I left, and then while we were talking my dad came home and said some of what was on his mind, too, about how I had made my bed and now I needed to lie in it and that I wouldn't get any help from them ever again." She cleared her throat again and rubbed her hands her legs. "So it was kind of hard to hear that."

Bah continued to sit with his face in his hands, shaking his head. "And you just wanted some support from your parents. I'm so sorry, Sandy."

"You know, Ray asked me later why I didn't just hang up on them, and I told him they were entitled to having a chance to say what they thought. I guess I felt like I took that away from them when I left."

"They did _not_." He opened his mouth to say more, but in the end he just shook his head at her.

Sandy smiled at him. "I don't know. I guess I felt bad about just deserting them the way I did, and maybe I wondered if them finding out about the baby would magically make everything better. But after that, I really started to stress and worry about how much a baby would change everything, and the whole thing just started to feel—it's hard to explain, but it didn't feel _good_. I wasn't excited. And I didn't talk to Ray about any of it, because I didn't want him to know that anything was wrong." She drew her legs up and wrapped her arms around them. "And, well, you can guess what happened. I'd still be pregnant."

Without speaking Bah reached out, grabbed Sandy's feet and pulled them until her legs were stretched out over his knees.

She was quiet for a moment, watching him as he stared down at the sidewalk and then cleared her throat again. "When I lost it, I thought it must have been my fault. Like, maybe the baby knew it wasn't wanted or something. I know that's not how it works. The doctor told me—well, I guess there was nothing we could have done differently, but I really wondered if it was _me_."

Bah shook his head and started to gently massage her calves, almost as if he wasn't aware he was doing it.

"But anyway, after that, Ray took a bunch of time off work and took me on a trip to Canada to cheer me up, and on the night that we got back, we went out for dinner. While we were eating, he said—" she paused, trying to remember the exact phrase, and finding that she couldn't recall it anymore, let out a sad little laugh. "You know, I saw it as such a significant thing at the time, but I don't even remember what it was that he said. Basically, he told me that maybe it would be better to wait to have kids when we were married. And, I mean, we had definitely talked about being married before, but on that particular night it was like someone hit a gong in my head when he said it."

"Why?" Bah raised his head to look over at her.

Sandy shrugged. "It was frustrating. After everything that happened, he felt like he could just decide that _now_ wasn't the right time—but that wasn't something we discussed when it was actually _happening_ , you know? I _yelled_ at him in the car on the way home about how I thought he was trying to decide my future for me and how I was still young and had my whole life to decide to get married and have kids, and that he wasn't going to get to have the final say in it just because he was so much older." She leaned her head sideways slightly, against the siding of the motel. "He looked at me that night like he thought I lost my mind. When I woke up the next morning, I told him I was leaving."

Bah exhaled loudly again and leaned back, too. "Just like that, huh?"

She nodded. "Yep. And obviously he knew I didn't have anywhere to go, so he told me I was welcome to stay at the house until I found somewhere else, but only at first. Later on he told me that I had to be out before the end of that week."

"And so you called Will?"

"And so I called Will," Sandy agreed. "And of course Ray backtracked when he realized that I was going all the way to Minnesota, but it's hard to walk back that kind of threat. Even if he didn't mean it, he definitely _said_ it knowing that my only other option was moving back into my parents' house." She shook her head. "So I drove out to Burnsville and then I met you." She raised her head off the side of the motel to look over at Bah, who looked deep in thought.

He rubbed his face with both hands. "I don't even know what to say."

She smiled grimly at him. "It's okay. You know, when I told Di all this I tried to tell her that it was in the past, but—" she shrugged. "It's not. Obviously it's not."

Bah rubbed his hands together to warm them up. "How do you feel about it now that it's been a few months?"

Sandy thought about it. "Well, it's hard, you know, because I had really wanted to make decisions for myself, but once I followed through with that I just felt so guilty. With my parents _and_ with Ray. It makes me wonder what the point is. I can't enjoy the choices I make because I don't feel like I deserve to enjoy myself after doing the things I've done." She shrugged. "I feel better about it now than I did in August, that's for sure. You've helped. Di and Will and Jenny have, too. And I don't regret moving out here."

He squeezed her knee. "So," Bah said, glancing over at her. "Do you mean that you felt guilty about spending time with me?"

"Oh, definitely," she said, and they both laughed, although Bah did so a little nervously. "I'd feel guilty, and then I'd get mad that I felt guilty. It was really confusing."

They were quiet for a few moments, both shivering a little but not wanting to prematurely end the conversation. Eventually Sandy swung her legs back onto the ground and scooted closer to Bah. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and kissed the top of her head. "Well, for what it's worth, I'm glad you moved here, too. I hope—" he paused, and Sandy craned her neck to look up at him. "I hope this is making you happy. Me, I mean."

Sandy rested her head back down on his chest and smiled. "You are. Thanks for letting me tell you everything and for not judging."

"I'm glad you trusted me enough to tell. Now I can finally tell all of my friends."

She snorted, and the two of them laughed together, the sound ringing out against the quiet night. When they fell silent again, Sandy sighed. "And really, thanks again for bringing me here. It's been great, even though we got chased by a ghost tonight."

Bah laughed. "I wouldn't speak too soon. We still have to kill a whole day here tomorrow."

"I'm sure it'll be even better than the real Paris."

"Well, let's not get carried away."


	15. Chapter 15

Happy New Year, friends! Hopefully everybody got at least a day or two to rest and be happy (and cold. So, so incredibly cold).

 **BlurredHorizon** \- Thank you thank you, again, for saying such nice things about this story. I really do appreciate it.

* * *

 **Chapter 15 - November 9 - 16, 1979**

"We talked on the phone all night. _All night_. I had an awful time at the store the next day because I barely slept. But the time just got away from us, you know? Does that ever happen to you and Bah?"

Sandy looked up from the slice of pumpkin pie that Di's mother had given her. "Actually, the opposite happens. The other night, Bah called from the road and I asked him what he was watching on TV, because I could hear it on in the background. He told me that he turned on an episode of _Happy Days_ and that he'd planned to be done talking by the time it ended. He says he does it all the time."

Di laughed a little uneasily. "So did he hang up on you when it was over?"

"No," Sandy said, shaking her head. "We actually talked for a while after. Definitely not all night, though. He's always really careful to go to sleep early."

"Well, I guess that's good." Di shovelled a forkful of pie into her mouth and then looked up at Sandy, suddenly self-conscious. "Oh, God, I'm not being annoying, am I?" she asked, around a mouthful of pie. I hope you don't think I'm bragging."

When Sandy and Di had met up that afternoon, the only topic of discussion on Di's mind had been Peter. The two of them had been spending a lot of time together since their first date.

"You're not," Sandy said. "You're happy. It's great. Besides, we talk about me all the time. This is more interesting. When are you seeing him again?"

Di grinned. "Tonight, I think. He's taking me to campus to show me where all of his classes and stuff are. I know it sounds kind of boring," she added, when Sandy couldn't help but frown. "I thought so too when he started telling me about it. But it's different when I'm with him. We have fun." Her smile grew wider and she quickly looked down at her pie.

Sandy pressed her fork into the whipped cream on top of her pie and smeared it around, trying to give her friend as much privacy to be happy and smitten as was possible when they were sitting together at the kitchen table in Di's house. "I can't believe how much your opinion of him has changed in so little time," she said after a while. "Let's not forget you had me follow you guys on your first date because you didn't think it would be any fun."

"Me either!" Di shook her head. "I mentioned to him that it was funny how we only met because he was trying to date my _sister_ , and he acted like he'd liked me better all along, but that's _such_ a lie."

Di had told some variation of this anecdote several different times since she'd started seeing Peter, and Sandy wasn't sure what to make of it. She didn't understand the point in Peter pretending that he'd never been interested in Beth. "Speaking of Beth," Sandy lowered her voice, checking to make sure Di's sister wasn't lurking around, "what does she think?"

Di rolled her eyes. "Oh, she's still making fun of him. But she's just jealous. She says none of the guys in her classes or on any of the Gophers' teams are good looking this year, so we've been hearing a lot about that."

"How can that be? Isn't it all the same guys?"

"I don't know." Di shrugged. "Maybe they all got ugly over the summer. Maybe all the good ones are playing on the Olympic team. Speaking of _athletes_ , when does Bah get back?"

"They fly in late next Thursday night," Sandy said, after taking a moment to remember what Bah had said to her on the phone when he'd mentioned that the schedule had changed. "It's been confusing—they weren't supposed to come home. After their game in Cincinnati on Wednesday, the next one is against Harvard on Monday, so the plan was to spend the weekend in Boston, but apparently their coach has to come back for those days now and so they're all coming back. Bah said his wife's about ready to kill him for being away all the time."

Di laughed around a bite of pie. "I would love to meet the woman who can intimidate that man. But, that's great, right? He'll be home." Her face suddenly lit up. "You know what we should do while he's here? The four of us should go on a double date. Wouldn't that be fun?"

When Sandy told Bah about Di's idea that night when he called her from his hotel room in Birmingham with _Mork and Mindy_ on in the background, he let out a doubtful grunt. "I mean, is he going to take us to see all the places where he learns about politics too? Because, you know, I only get so many days at home."

Sandy laughed. "No, I don't think so. I'm pretty sure it'll be normal. Just dinner, as far as I was told. Don't be mean."

Bah yawned into the phone. "I'm not. I'm very kind. I'm very _tired_. I miss my apartment. Did you know that Mike Ramsey, future NHL star, snores loud enough to wake the dead?"

She heard, in the background, the sound of someone, presumably Mike, saying, "aww, shut up, I said I don't _snore_!"

"He says he doesn't snore," Sandy pointed out.

"Well, how would he know? He's obviously the one who gets to sleep." After a moment, a door banged closed on Bah's end. "He left," he said. "For the record, he _does_ snore." Bah sighed. "I've been feeling a little hemmed in lately."

Sandy hummed. "How come?"

"It's all the travelling, I guess. We play our game, squish into the bus or a plane, then we squish into a hotel room. And then after that, the next day, we squish right back onto the bus." He sighed again and added, in a quiet voice, "lots of squishing."

"That's miserable," she told him. "But wait, why are you not rooming with Pav when you guys are on the road? You seem to have such a good thing going with him at home."

"We do. Pav's the _best_ roommate. He really only spends time with me when I force him to. The guy just loves being alone, so I'm spoiled until we go out and I'm staying with Rammer and he's with Buzzy. I basically live in that apartment alone with a ghost who helps with the rent and cooking and cleaning."

"Well," Sandy said, clearing her throat, "now that I have you feeling sentimental about your haunted apartment, is it a bad time to ask you if you want to come stay at the house with me this weekend?"

"Wait, what? No, that sounds like fun. Are Will and Jenny okay with it?"

"No, they won't care," she said. "They're going to Duluth for a few nights."

Bah made an odd, woofing sound. "Now, there's a romantic holiday destination. What the hell are they doing there?"

Sandy thought about the point at dinner a few nights before when Jenny had all-too-casually slipped their plans into the conversation. "We just want to get away for a couple of nights. I hope it's not too much of an issue if we take the car."

Will piped up, apparently unable to help himself. "Well, we didn't really have a lot of say in whether or not _you_ took it to _South Dakota_ , so—"

"Last time I checked I'm paying rent now, and it's still _my_ car," Sandy said, cutting him off.

"Well, last time _I_ checked—"

Jenny slammed her palm down on the table and Will and Sandy both jumped. " _Enough_ , Will." She turned back to Sandy. "If you need it for work or if you have plans with Bah or something, I'm sure we can borrow one from someone from school or—or—well, we'll figure it out," Jenny said, looking so desperate that Sandy really couldn't say no. At that point, she didn't need the car, anyway. All of her shifts at the store were with Di, so she could catch a ride.

"Sure," Sandy had said. "You guys go have a good time."

A troublesome idea had occurred to her that day, and it had been on her mind since then. "You know, I think they're going there to try and get away from me," Sandy told Bah.

He snorted. "And why would you think that?"

"They booked a hotel room in _Duluth, Minnesota_. Just for the weekend. You're the only person I know who just does that kind of thing just because."

"Fair enough," Bah said. "Do you think they're getting tired of you?"

"It's possible," Sandy said. She glanced up, checking the living room for Will before continuing to speak quietly. "Maybe they thought I'd get my own place by now."

"Is that something you want?"

"I don't know," she said. "It's not like I'm bringing home bags of gold bars working at the store."

She could almost hear Bah rolling his eyes. "Well, you'd need a roommate, obviously. And I'm sure they know money is tight."

"Right. I definitely think I should move out of here before that baby comes, though," she said, trying to keep her voice just above a whisper. "Don't you think?"

"Hmm." Bah was quiet for a moment as he tried to work out how to ask his next question. "That sort of depends. When you say 'out of here,' do you mean 'away from Minnesota,' or—?"

Sandy shook her head. "No, no. I just mean out of _this_ house. I don't want to be in the way when they're trying to figure out how to take care of a child. But that means I have to look for an apartment, which means I'll have to _pay_ for an apartment, which is, again, kind of stressful to think about. What are you guys paying for rent?"

"Our place is $250," Bah said. "And we split that. But I think it's cheaper for us because somebody cut a deal with the property manager. Maybe you can move into our place when we move out in March."

The thought of March being just five months away, paired with the thought of having to fill Bah's spacious two-bedroom apartment with furniture filled Sandy with further dread. "Maybe," she said.

They hung up a few minutes later, once Sandy was able to convince Bah to come out for dinner with Di and Peter after his practice the following Friday, before coming to stay for the weekend. When the doorbell rang on Friday evening and Sandy pulled the door open, she let out an involuntary gasp.

"Boo," Bah said. "I had it done just for you."

Bah was dressed in a button-down shirt and tie with a checked jacket, but his left eye was also grotesquely bruised.

" _Jesus_ ," Sandy said, pulling him by the arm into the house. She grabbed the duffel bag out of his hand and dropped it in the hallway on her way into the kitchen, where she took ice cubes out of the freezer and put them into a tea towel. "What happened?"

Bah followed her. "Would you believe I got in a fight?" he asked, and when Sandy shook her head, he laughed. "Good, because that's not what happened. No, we were running drills at the end of practice, and I was in behind Strobel in the corner and he went like this—" he jerked his right elbow back. Sandy winced. "Right. He got me pretty good. _And_ he feels just terrible, if that helps at all."

"It does." Sandy handed him the towel full of ice. "Does it hurt?" She reached up to gently touch his eye while he was distracted with the towel and he flinched away from her hand. "Oh _God_ , sorry. Are you—can you see? Did you _drive_ here with one eye?"

"No, it doesn't hurt, and yes, I can still _see_ ," Bah said, closing his good eye and patting Sandy on the forehead as if this proved his point. "Anyway, should we go? You can drive if you don't trust me." He tossed her his car keys. "Do you think the senator will disapprove?"

"He's not a _senator_ ," Sandy told him. "And he's going to like you even though you look like someone who gets into street fights."

Bah held the front door open for her and awkwardly leaned down to kiss her on the cheek as she reached for her purse. "Well, that may be what actually happened. You have no way of knowing that."

Fifteen minutes later, Sandy pulled up to the restaurant, which Peter had picked, evidently in an attempt to show them what a fancy man he was. "Hope you don't mind having a glass of water for dinner," she said, glancing over at Bah, who was still holding the ice-filled towel to his face.

"I'm _obviously_ going to pay for you to eat real food," he said, lowering the towel and grinning at Sandy's reaction to his still-puffy, still-painful looking eye. "What, did you think it was going to look normal again by the time we got here? This is your view for this weekend."

Sandy put the car in park and studied him. "Maybe it'll grow on me. It _does_ make you look pretty tough."

Bah grinned and puffed his chest out. "Yeah? At least it doesn't look like I'm an idiot who can't keep his head up." He glanced around the parking lot. "So, before we go in there—tell me about this guy Di's with. Do we like him?"

"I don't know." Sandy shrugged. "I've only met him once. I don't really have an opinion."

He gave her a doubtful look. "And you expect me to believe that? C'mon, tell me. Is he a good guy?"

Sandy frowned, trying to think of the best way to phrase the issue. "The way she describes him is like someone from a movie or a book," she said. "And it's hard to think that's true."

"So you think he's full of shit?"

"No. Well, I don't know," she said. "When I met him he just seemed like a regular guy. Anyway, there's one thing in particular that bugs me."

"What's that?" Bah scanned the parking lot again.

"It doesn't seem to bother Di, but he keeps acting like he wasn't interested in Di's sister before they met. He even said it to _me_ , and I'm pretty sure the two of them met when he was over at their house, trying to get Beth to go out with him. It's just weird."

Bah frowned. "And why do you find that weird?"

She stared at him. "Don't you? They both know that's what was going on. They're both adults. Why not just be open about it? It makes me worry—" Sandy looked around too, making sure that Di wasn't walking up to the car. "It makes me worry that he's only with her because he couldn't date Beth."

"Ah," Bah said. "You don't want her to be a consolation prize."

"No," Sandy said. "Because she's better than her sister. You like Di, right?"

Bah frowned, wincing a little as he screwed up the muscles around his bruised eye. "Well, I'd say yes, as enthusiastically as is—uh—appropriate for someone who is much more interested in her friend."

"You're sweet," Sandy said, grinning at him. "Anyway, that's really the only thing that bothers me. And she's happy with him. You should study him tonight and see if you pick up on the little movie-character things. Maybe it's just me being picky."

"I thought I was supposed to be nice," Bah said, smirking. "Tell me something, though: would anybody be good enough for you? Don't you think you'd be doing this even if he wasn't a little weird? I think that's just being a protective friend."

As Sandy started to answer, someone knocked on the driver's side window and they both jumped. Di was standing outside with Peter, waving and grinning. As they got out of the car, she said, "hi guys! How was—oh, yikes. Nice shiner, Rocky." Di grabbed Peter by the hand and dragged him a few steps closer to Bah. "Bah, meet Peter. Peter, this is Bah. He usually cleans up better."

Bah laughed and shook Peter's hand. "She's right. Can't put a shirt and tie on this," he said, gesturing at his face. "It's nice to meet you."

"Good to meet you, too," Peter said. "Can I ask what happened?" he asked, drawing a circle in the air with his finger around his own eye.

"Oh, I was talking when I should have been listening," Bah said, and they both laughed. "Just an occupational hazard, I guess. Wouldn't be the first time it's happened."

"But, I mean, it wasn't—you know, a puck or a stick, right?"

Bah patted Peter on the back and started walking with him towards the restaurant. "I don't think I'd feel like coming out for dinner tonight if I'd taken a puck to the eye. This time it was just an elbow. I've gotten it worse before. A couple years ago…" He continued to talk as the two of them lead the way inside, with Di and Sandy following behind.

"Doesn't he look kinda sexy with a black eye?" Di whispered.

" _Hey_ ," Sandy hissed back, and Di giggled.

It turned out that Peter had brought them to such an expensive restaurant because his parents owned the place. "I brought Di here the third time we went out to try and impress her," he said.

"He had me so worried that he wouldn't be able to afford it that I ordered a _garden salad_ ," Di said, and they all laughed. "It was completely unacceptable."

Sandy tried to communicate to Bah from across the table, using only her eyes, that this was an example of what she'd been talking about. Peter seemed to be sincere, but this was odd when contrasted with the awkward power play of having them all come to a fancy restaurant, then immediately revealing that they were only able to do so because of a family connection. The whole thing made it seem like he was stuck between doing the things he wanted to do and doing things he thought he _should_ be doing. Bah narrowed his good eye at Sandy, not understanding, looking like he was trying to read a sign from across a large room.

While they ate, Sandy could tell that Bah was trying to glean some kind of impression from Peter that matched what she had mentioned in the car. To the untrained eye, however, Bah seemed inordinately interested in Peter and his life.

"What was it like growing up with a family that owned a restaurant? How much did you have to help out here when you were a kid? What's your favourite thing on the menu? And you didn't want to get involved in the family business? How hard is it to find parking on campus? How many years of school do you have left? What does a guy do with his masters in Political Sciences?"

All of these questions yielded one or two sentence answers from Peter, who seemed surprised at the attention. Sandy assumed that Bah was trying to do what he had done to Will, and strike on a vein of conversation that got Peter talking about himself. It wasn't working quite as well.

Sandy and Di watched the two boys talk, their heads moving back and forth like they were watching a tennis match. Eventually, Di stood and excused herself to use the washroom, adding, "Sandy, do you need to join me?"

Once they were in the washroom, Di checked quickly to see if they were alone before turning back to Sandy. "What's Bah doing? He seems a little obsessed with Peter."

"He's—" Sandy paused, unsure of how much to reveal. She sighed. "He's just doing what I told him to do. He's trying to get a good idea of what kind of guy Peter is." This wasn't the whole truth, and even though she wasn't necessarily lying, Sandy felt guilty as she spoke.

Di folded her arms and frowned, leaning up against the row of sinks. "I've gotta say, that's pretty disappointing to hear," she said. "Don't you trust that I can tell whether Peter is a good guy? You need to get Bah to tell you before you believe it?"

"That's not it," Sandy said. "I just—he seems—it's—"

"It's disappointing," Di said again, cutting Sandy off. "Especially when we both know that I've been supportive of you and Bah ever since you started seeing him, because I think he's a really nice guy and that he'll be good for you after everything that happened to you back home, but I also trust your judgement. What you guys have going on doesn't really make the most sense, but I don't—"

The door suddenly breezed open, cutting Di off, and a woman walked past them and into the washroom. Di waited, folding her arms again. She didn't look mad, which made Sandy feel worse. It was maybe too easy, she thought, to write Di off as the type of person who _would_ waste her time with someone who wasn't deserving of it. Maybe it was because of the way the two girls had met, or because maybe she had connected Di and Beth in her mind, but Sandy realized that she'd been associating Di with having a lot of issues in the romance department.

This wasn't fair, since Di had never demonstrated herself to be anything but completely competent. She certainly had a better grip on what she wanted than Sandy did. It fully registered for Sandy in that moment that she'd labouring under the somewhat prideful delusion that she had taken Di under her wing, when the reality was the opposite. It had been Di who set Sandy up with a job, Di who had urged Sandy to spend time with Bah, Di who had been supportive of Sandy's choice to move to Minnesota. If anything, it was _Sandy_ who had all the issues. She suddenly felt embarrassed.

Di moved aside for the woman to wash her hands. She eyed the two of them in the mirror, looking suspicious as to why they were just standing around, not talking.

As soon as the woman had gone, Sandy said, "Di, I'm sorry. You're right. Of course you're right."

Di studied Sandy for a moment before dropping her arms. "Did you guys at least have my best interests at heart?"

Sandy sighed. " _Yes_ , Di. We wanted to make sure he was good enough for you. That's all. Because, honestly, Peter is—he's kind of—"

Di interrupted, saving Sandy the nightmare of having to navigate the minefield of figuring out how to kindly word her issue with Peter. "He's a total dork, yeah." She giggled at the relieved look on Sandy's face. "I've spent way more time with him than you have—what made you think I wouldn't catch on to that?"

"I don't know," Sandy said. She shook her head. "I feel like such an ass."

"I said before that I could tell why my sister didn't like him, and that's what it was," Di said. "The guys she likes have a response to everything. They've seen it all, and Peter hasn't, and so he makes it up as he goes. He's just an awkward guy, but he means well." She smiled at Sandy. "You don't have to worry."

There was a soft knock on the bathroom door. Sandy reached over and pulled it open, revealing Bah, who was looking up and slightly to the left. "Everything okay?"

Di followed his gaze, confused. "What are you looking at? We're not _changing_ in here or anything."

Bah looked down at them. "Well, I don't know. You've been gone for about ten minutes. What's going on?"

"Your interrogation style wasn't sneaky enough," Sandy said.

"It wasn't?" Bah feigned great surprise. He shook his head. "It's a good thing I never wanted to be a cop. You might want to tell him that's what was going on later, Di, because that guy definitely thinks I'm gonna try and kill him."

"Good to know," Di giggled.

"Way too many questions. If you guys weren't in here, I was thinking about just taking off running straight out of this place."

"Please don't," Sandy told him. "Not in your condition. You can only see out of one eye."

Bah winked at her with his good eye, which, combined with his swollen left eye, just looked like he was blinking emphatically. "See you guys back at the table."

When he had gone, Sandy turned back to her friend. "You know I didn't mean anything negative, right? I just—"

Di cut her off by shaking her head. "I know. I'm not mad. You and Peter actually have a lot in common, you know. Neither of you have any damn idea how to handle yourselves."

Sandy laughed. "That's something we can bond over, I guess."


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter 16 - November 16 - 17, 1979**

Sandy was awoken on Saturday morning by the smell of something burning. Bah seemed to notice this at the same time. He shook himself free of the covers and ran out of the bedroom. A moment later, she heard him cursing out in the kitchen and followed him out.

"Are you burning my house down?" she asked.

Bah pulled a charred piece of toast out of the toaster and, finding it hot, immediately let it fall on the floor. "Je _sus_ ," he said, reaching for an oven mitt. "I guess it's not a good idea to start making toast and then go lay down for a minute, huh?"

"No, probably not." Sandy laughed. "Why didn't you wake me up? I could have made breakfast."

Bah dropped the ruined toast into the trash and shook his head. "Well, I wanted to do something nice. Smells like a damn smokehouse in here."

He reached for the bread again but Sandy stopped him. "You can make coffee," she said, pointing at the cupboard where it was stored. "Let me handle the hard part."

When toast and coffee were (safely) made, they settled down at the table. Bah sipped from his mug and sighed. "This is nice, isn't it? What do you have planned for today? Do you work?"

She shook her head. "Nope. I have the day off. I was thinking about doing some cleaning in the back yard. Will has been complaining about how bad it looks." They both turned to look out the window and saw where Will had attempted, on a few different occasions, to rake the leaves and twigs that had fallen and compacted at the bottoms of the trees into piles. He had gotten as far as pulling some of the mess up and then, frustrated and tired, had stopped.

"Looks like he just made it worse," Bah said, and they laughed. "Well, my practice today only goes until noon, so if you hold off on starting that for a while, I can help you. I'll bring beer home and we'll make it into a party."

Sandy wrinkled her nose. "Starting at noon?"

Bah shrugged. "I have to take off in the morning to catch our flight to Boston, so if we start partying early, maybe we can be done early."

And so Sandy stood in the back yard after Bah had left for practice, trying to conceptualize how they would tackle their task. She gathered rakes from the shed, along with the large garbage bags that Will had bought the last time he'd tried to do the job himself. Then, because she was starting to get bored and cold (although she would never admit this to Bah—he'd been trying to convince Sandy to buy a new winter jacket), she began digging at the compacted leaves at the base of one of the trees with a rake.

By the time Bah returned, Sandy had cleared the first tree of the muddy, wet mess and had collected it into a semi-neat pile. He came walking around the house, carrying a case of beer.

"I thought you were gonna wait. I've been banging on the door for five minutes."

Sandy huffed, swiping at the sweat dripping down her forehead despite having long since removed her jacket. "It's a bigger job than I thought. And it's not fun. It's terrible. I can see why Will quit."

Bah set the beer down on the back porch and sat down next to it. "Oh, great. Do you want to sit and have a beer and a break?"

She joined him on the porch, trying to discreetly check if she smelled. Bah passed her a beer and took a sip of his own. He pressed the cool bottle to his eye, which was still a little swollen.

"Does that hurt?"

Bah shook his head. "No, not really anymore. It was an interesting practice trying to skate without any peripheral vision on my left side, though."

"Do you think Herb would decide to not play you if your eye was still swollen?"

He shrugged. "It won't be swollen anymore by the time we play. But we can only play with twenty guys, so there's always a couple sitting per game. Our line—me and Buzzy and Pav—have been pretty solid since the fall, so it's hard to break that up unless more than one of us sits." Bah sipped his beer. "Everybody has sat at least once. Even the good players."

Sandy dug her elbow into his side. "You _are_ a good player."

He grinned and clinked his bottle against hers. "Thanks, Mom."

They spent the next couple of hours attacking the leafy mess and gathering it into one large, muddy pile in the middle of the yard, each polishing off four beer in the process.

"I kinda thought this would be the type of thing we could jump into," Bah said when they were done, using his rake for support. "But I don't want to. It looks gross. It's not a fun fall activity."

Sandy, who was feeling tipsy and was sitting on the ground next to the pile, nodded. "That's what happens when you don't clean your yard."

"Yeah, _Will_."

" _Yeah_. Here—help me up," Sandy said, holding out a hand. When Bah grabbed it, she yanked and he toppled over into the dirty leaves, letting out a deeply upset yell as he did. Sandy shrieked as Bah's arms snaked out and wrapped around her waist, pulling her into the leaves with him.

It didn't take long for their neat pile of leaves to deteriorate into a flattened disaster. Bah tried to stick handfuls of leaves down the back of Sandy's shirt and Sandy, feeling a little more creative, attempted to do the same with Bah's pants. After a few minutes of thrashing around on the back yard, they were exhausted and Sandy lay across Bah's chest, her head resting on the grass.

"More tiring than sex," Bah murmured, pulling a twig out of Sandy's hair. "Less fun, too."

"I think I'm gonna throw up," Sandy said, but she didn't move. This is what it would be like, she thought, to be with Bah—not in the weird, half-assed way that they already _were_ together, but really be with him. He was rubbing her back in a semi-comforting manner and the brief feeling of nausea passed, and it was replaced by a troubling rush of affection for Bah. Sandy was quiet and still, hoping that it too would pass.

After the two of them had lain there for a while, Bah raised his head off of the ground and looked around. "Are you hungry?"

"I could eat," Sandy mumbled into the grass.

They left the leaves where they were, promising no one in particular that they would go back out later to bag them up. Will would, late Sunday afternoon when he and Jenny returned from Duluth, stand at the window facing the back yard and shake his head in quiet rage at the mess they had left behind.

Bah pulled the fridge open and examined its contents. "Can I make supper?"

Sandy, who had been worrying about the prospect of having to prepare a nutritionist-approved meal for an Olympic athlete, nodded. "I mean—as long as it isn't toast."

"Oh." Bah straightened up. "Really? I was going to make grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup."

She felt, again, a rush of deep affection for Bah. Unable to stop herself, Sandy kissed him, grabbing handfuls of his shirt and pushing him against the fridge.

"Wow. I had no idea that was such a romantic meal," Bah said when they separated. "Does that mean I can use the bread? I won't use the toaster."

Sandy took a step backwards, away from him. "Of course, Bah. Make whatever you want."

While Bah set to work in the kitchen, Sandy pulled a chair over to the record player in the corner of the dining room and filtered through Will and Jenny's collection. She dropped the needle down on the album that was already on, and Don McLean's voice filled the room.

"You know, I know all the words to this song," Bah said, opening drawers at random until he located a can opener.

"I did not know that," Sandy said, crossing the room and taking another beer from the box on the floor.

" _But February made me shiver with every paper I delivered, bad news on the doorstep—_ oh yeah, my parents had this album; I heard it all the time," he said. He pointed at the case of beer on the floor. "Grab me another one of those and maybe you'll get a little concert."

She hurried to open another bottle, handed it to Bah, and hopped up onto the counter. Bah took a long swig, set it down, and cleared his throat.

"... _I was a lonely teenage broncin' buck with a pink carnation and a pickup truck, but I knew I was out of luck the day the music died_ ," he sang at her, using a spatula as a microphone and turning his attention away from the sandwich on a frying pan. Bah wiggled around in what he must have assumed was a tempting way and held his hand out for Sandy to take, pulling her down off the counter and spinning her around.

Sandy only knew the words to the chorus, and so when it came around the two of them shouted it together, dancing around the kitchen. By the time Bah was singing " _and as I watched him on the stage my hands were clenched in fists of rage_ ," Sandy smelled something burning.

"Might want to check the sandwich, Don," she said, and Bah spun around.

" _And as the flames climbed high into the_ —oh, God dammit." He used his microphone/spatula to flip it, revealing a blackened side. "Well, that one can be mine— _I saw Satan laughing with delight the day the music died_."

When the song ended, they were both danced out and Bah seemed to have committed himself to not burning Sandy's sandwich. "What else do they have in there?" He pointed at the record player. "I don't think you want me to sing McLean all night."

Sandy flicked through the stack of records on the shelf. "Billy Joel. Jenny's _obsessed_ with him. She loves Fleetwood Mac, too. Donna Summer, Springsteen, Michael Jackson, the Cars, Rolling Stones—any of this appealing to you?"

"Any Bob Dylan?"

She paused, taking a second look through the collection before turning back to him. "Doesn't look like it."

Bah set the frying pan down in the sink and gave her an impatient look. "They don't have any _Bob Dylan_ records?" he asked, speaking the name slowly, as if she had surely not heard him. "Unacceptable," he said when she shook her head. "Remind me to get them one—you know he's from here, right? He grew up in Hibbing. Right near where I'm from."

"I did not know that," Sandy said.

Seeing her not exhibiting the appropriate amount of excitement, he waved a dismissive hand at her. "No Blondie either?"

"Nope," Sandy said, grinning at him. "I guess they don't care that Debbie Harry lives in their house with them." She took Don McLean off and put _Rumours_ on.

Bah tipped the sandwich onto a plate. "Yeah. What the _hell_ is happening in this house? You're really going unappreciated in your time."

He ladled out bowls of canned tomato soup, placed them next to their sandwiches, and the two of them settled down to eat. While he munched on his charred sandwich, Bah sighed contentedly. "This is so _nice_ ," he said for the second time that day, resting his elbow on the table. "Doesn't it seem like we just _live_ here and this is _our_ house?"

"It does, but you should know that I think we have too many pictures of Will and Jenny in our home," she said, and he laughed.

"It's just that they're so much more photogenic than we are." He grinned at her. He fell silent for a moment, and then he asked, "could you see yourself as the domestic type? I mean, I know enough to know that's not the plan for the _immediate_ future, but someday?"

"I guess so," Sandy said, shrugging. "We all _have_ to be the domestic type at some point, right?"

He spooned some soup into his mouth while he considered this. "Maybe. I don't know. I've been thinking about that more and more recently—I mean, just because I know there's going to be a point where I'm not playing hockey anymore, even if that's a long time from now."

She frowned. "How long is 'a long time?'"

"You can't really plan for a long career in hockey," Bah said. "It would be nice, but you'd be an idiot to count on that. I mean, I could blow out my knee tomorrow night and never play again." He shrugged one shoulder. "I would like to think I have a good ten years left, but that's probably being pretty generous. Real life has to start at some point."

It was a little startling to hear him say he wanted to continue playing for ten more years, and so Sandy took a long sip of beer for something to do. "And what does real life look like for you?" she asked, after taking a second to try and compose her face.

"I don't know. I could coach or teach, but I'm not sure if it would be—I don't know," he said again, shaking his head. "And don't think I didn't see you freaking out just now, for the record," he added.

Sandy grimaced. "Sorry."

"Don't be. I can't imagine I'll still be playing hockey like _this_ when I'm in my thirties. With the travelling and the renting an apartment with Pav—that would be wild. I just mean it'll always be a part of my life, you know? At least, I'd like it to be."

"That's—impressive," Sandy said.

"What is?"

"That you have something you care about that much."

Bah frowned, stuffing the rest of his sandwich crust into his mouth. "I know guys who have retired and it nearly drives them nuts—it's like withdrawals, you know, from drugs. I worry that maybe that could happen to me."

"Oh, good," Sandy said.

"It's true, though!" Bah laughed. "I've thought about hockey in some capacity every day since I was a kid. Can you imagine what it would do to me if I just—" he snapped his fingers, "stopped? I'd lose it. And so yeah, I want to stay involved in it in some way, even if I'm not playing." He frowned at her. "Haven't you ever had anything you felt passionate about?"

She dunked what was left of her sandwich in what was left of her soup while she thought about it. Sandy had always been, at best, a casual participant in everything she did. "Not really," she said. "Not like _that_ , anyway. I was always just average." Her parents, being the people who spawned Will, were not particularly enthusiastic about anything their children did where they weren't the best, and so Sandy had felt actively discouraged from doing new things when she found she wasn't instantly great at them.

As she explained this to Bah, he sat back in his chair and continued to frown. "That's awful," he said. "You don't have to be the best at something to love it. I'm not."

Sandy shrugged. "That's the way it was. When I started track, my mom told me that she hoped I was at least good at it, because I was 'chasing away' any chance I had at having a nice figure. They were very critical people."

"Jesus," Bah said. "No offense, but I'm glad that I won't have the pleasure of meeting her."

"Oh, none taken," she said, laughing.

They each drank another beer, polishing off the twelve-pack that Bah had brought while they washed the dishes. "Do they have anything else to drink in here?" Bah asked.

Sandy turned to him and puffed her cheeks out. "Yeah. Water. I need to take a break or I might throw up all over our nice house." She pulled open the cupboard where Will kept the liquor. "Feel free to go nuts, though."

Bah shook his head at her. "Such a spoilsport." He pulled out two glasses, filled one with water from the tap, and passed it to her. "Do you want to play a drinking game?"

"With water?"

He shrugged. "If that's what it's going to take to get you to attend the party I'm hosting. Do you have a quarter?"

While Sandy went to get one out of her purse, Bah mixed himself a drink. When she came back into the kitchen, he had arranged himself on the floor, his legs splayed awkwardly and his glass sitting in front of him. "Come sit," he said, patting the linoleum. "We're gonna play Quarters."

Sandy had never played Quarters, and so Bah helpfully explained. It was a simple game: bounce a quarter off the floor and into the other person's glass, and the other person would then have to take a drink. There was a bit of a learning curve, but Sandy had an edge over Bah in that her glass was full of water, and he had just poured himself a fairly strong rum and Coke.

"Okay, just wait," Bah said, about twenty minutes after he had stopped getting his bounces anywhere close to Sandy's glass. "Here's an idea. Why don't we switch drinks? I'm pretty sure this isn't fair. No—wait, wait!" he said again, as Sandy reached out to switch the glasses.

"What?"

Bah grabbed the bottle of rum, which was sitting on the floor with him as he had needed to refill his drink once already. "I have a better idea. Let's make a bet," he said, and proceeded to top it up again, the bottle rattling against the glass as his hand shook a little. Then, apparently as an afterthought, he poured a generous amount into the half-full water glass, too. "If I make this shot, we stop playing this game forever, and you have to drink both of these."

"Okay," Sandy said. "What happens if you miss?"

"We stop playing this game forever, _I_ have to drink both of these. And I think I might have to go to sleep."

Sandy felt pretty confident, since Bah was unable to bounce his shots in a straight line. "You got it," she said, and she even nudged her glass a little closer to Bah, just to make it more fair.

Bah cleared his throat, set his jaw, and, to Sandy's horror, bounced the quarter smoothly into her glass. He threw his hands in the air and made a series of hooting noises that sounded a little like the organist that had been revving up the crowd at the hockey game Sandy had been to. When he was done celebrating, he pointed at Sandy. "Drink."

She picked up the water glass and narrowed her eyes. "Did I just get hustled?"

"I don't think so," Bah said, shaking his head. "I think I'd need to be pretending to be drunk for me to be hustling you. But I'm—" He gestured around with his hands, emitting a high pitched whistle. "Just very lucky. A deal's a deal, though," he added, pointing at her again, more forcefully. "Drink."

It took Sandy a few minutes to get down both drinks, but Bah refused to allow them to get up until she finished. Fleetwood Mac had long since fallen silent on the record player, and so the room was deadly quiet as Sandy took a deep breath and tossed back the last of Bah's drink. Bah, who was lying flat on his back with his legs propped straight up in the air against the cupboards, applauded.

"Proud of you," he said, and held a hand out to her. "Come here."

Sandy reached up and set the empty glasses on the counter, and then crawled over to where Bah was and rested her head on his stomach. "I'm going to throw up," she said again.

"If you keep saying that, it'll come true."

An indeterminate amount of time later, Sandy found herself being carried out of the kitchen, one of her legs dangling down near the floor. Bah, walking as if each individual step was costing him incredible effort, appeared to be trying to get her to bed.

"I can walk," she said, and he jumped at the sound of her voice.

He redoubled his hold on her leg and shook his head. "I thought you were passed out. Nope, though. Chivalry. Maybe—you know, you might want to bend your neck a little bit going down this hallway."

She compacted herself as much as was possible in Bah's arms as he staggered towards the bedroom. When he eventually got into the room, he managed to approach the bed and drop Sandy down, flopping down next to her. "A full body workout," he mumbled into the blankets.

Sandy laughed, and the last thing she could remember saying was, "I guess that's one way of telling me I'm getting fat," before rolling over and reaching for him.

When Sandy awoke on Sunday morning, she could hear the shower running, but it was still dark outside. She sat up and looked around. The hallway light was on, and in that dim light she could see that Bah's duffel bag was repacked and sitting on the floor.

Bah came in a moment later, rubbing a towel over his hair. "Mornin'," he said, sitting on the bed and leaning across to kiss her. "Sorry—I didn't mean to wake you up."

"Were you gonna leave without saying goodbye?" Now that she was fully awake, Sandy could feel the beginnings of a major headache brewing. Almost as if sensing this, Bah shook his head and gestured in the direction of the bedside table, where he had placed a glass of water and an aspirin.

"Nah. I just wanted to let you sleep as long as I could. I've been up for about an hour. I cleaned up the mess we left in the kitchen. Not much I could do about the leaves in the yard, though."

She glanced at the clock and winced. It wasn't even 6 AM. "Thanks. When do you guys leave?"

"Sometime before 9," Bah replied. "I have to go back to the apartments to pick a couple of guys up on my way, though." He reached for his shirt, which had been discarded on the floor and then, yawning, pulled it over his head.

Sandy watched him get dressed, a sinking feeling in her stomach. _This_ is what it would be like to be with him, she thought again. It wouldn't be all drinking while doing yard work together and fuzzy nights listening to music and dancing in the kitchen and sex and enjoying each other's company. Well, maybe it would be, but only sometimes. More often than not, it would be this, Sandy thought as she watched Bah hop on one foot, trying to put his socks on. She tried to imagine herself in her thirties, still saying goodbye to him as he got up in the morning so he could travel to his next game.

If Bah had a long career in hockey, which was what Sandy was supposed to want for him if she wanted him to be successful, she realized that _this_ would be her life. She knew that there would be a point when he would no longer be playing, but what if Bah was lucky and he got his ten years? What if he got fifteen?

Bah shouldered his duffel bag and came back to the bed. Sandy was grateful that he hadn't turned in the bedroom light, because she was sure he'd see her thoughts written boldly across her face.

"This was a lot of fun," he said, kneeling on the edge of the bed and leaning close. "I wish I didn't have to go so soon."

"Me either," Sandy mumbled, and she buried her face in the front of his shirt.

He rubbed her back. "I won't be away too long this time," he said. "I'll miss you."

Bah wasn't wrong. The team was coming back on Tuesday morning, but then leaving early the next morning for a series of games in Calgary against the Canadians. But then, of course, he'd be back after that.

Once he had gone, Sandy couldn't fall asleep again. She turned on the bedroom light and stood in front of the schedule that Bah had made for her at the start of the season, counting the days. The boys were leaving—leaving for good—on February 6th. They had a game against the Soviets in New York and from there, they would go directly to Lake Placid and stay there until the Olympics were over.

Eighty-one days. Eighty-one days until he technically had no reason to live there anymore and would leave. Eighty-one days left to figure out what they were _doing_. It was more than Sandy had thought there would be—February seemed so close. For a moment she felt relieved, but then she counted the days that Bah had marked with a "B" in the corner of the calendar day—the days that he would be home.

Not counting days when Bah and the team would be leaving to travel, there were about thirty-five days left.

"I'm gonna throw up," Sandy whispered, to no one in particular.


	17. Chapter 17

**November 29, 1979**

"I just don't really see what's wrong with my jacket," Sandy said.

Di paused, glancing up from studying a row of jackets in the women's section at Donaldson's. "I'm not even going to dignify that with a response."

"Oh, nice."

When Sandy had agreed to go shopping with Di, she had been under the impression that they would be looking for something for Di. Unfortunately, this was a mistake and the entire operation had been a trap to make her look at winter jackets.

Di wrestled a hanger out of a rack and held it out to Sandy. The coat on the hanger was long, quilted, and red. "What about this one?"

Sandy shrugged as Di handed it to her. "It's definitely a jacket." She didn't want to admit it, but it was getting harder to justify not owning proper winter apparel. Sandy tended to wear a sweater or two under her jacket that had been more than enough in Everett. This did the job, but it made her look a little like a bodybuilder in the arms.

"Try it on," Di said, reaching out and starting to unzip Sandy's jacket. Sandy batted Di's hands away and set to work extricating herself from her various sweaters, and Di giggled as she watched. "Yeah, that's definitely more convenient than owning something that's warm enough on its own."

Sandy held an arm out for Di to pull on her sleeve. "Well, it's not like I spend a lot of time outside in the cold. I'm not—I don't know—cross country skiing or anything." With the sweaters carefully folded and draped over a clothing rack, she heaved a sigh and flapped her arms around, trying to air them out.

Di rolled her eyes. "How often do you think _I_ go _cross country skiing_? I can't believe it's this big of a job to convince you to stay _warm_ during the winter in _Minnesota_."

"All right, all right, enough," Sandy said, taking the red jacket off the hanger and pulling it on. Studying herself in a nearby mirror, she thought it was probably too long—it came down past her knees.

But Di came up behind Sandy and flipped the fur-trimmed hood up, smiling in a satisfied sort of way. "What do you figure?"

"I don't know about the colour." They both turned to see Bah, standing on the other side of the rack, pulling out the same jacket, but in blue. "Kind of makes you look like a sausage."

"Bah, you're a half an hour late. This the _first_ one I've gotten her to try on," Di said. "And when you finally show up, you say she looks like food. What's the matter with you?"

Bah shook his head. "I've been wandering around trying to find you guys in this damn store. We should have figured out a place to meet."

"We did," Di said. She gestured around them. "We're here looking for a jacket. The women's outerwear section would have been a terrific place to start."

Sandy held up a hand. "Did you two plan to both be here to force me to buy a jacket?"

"Yes," they said together.

"Great."

"Well, what?" Bah asked. "Do you want to be cold all winter?" He came around the rack, still carrying the blue jacket, and handed it to her. "Try this one."

Sandy turned back to the mirror and studied herself. Annoyingly, she noted that Bah was right—the long quilted jacket, with its cinched waist, did make her look a little like a very warm sausage link. She sighed and unzipped it.

For a while, Sandy continued to try on the seemingly infinite stock of jackets in her size that Bah and Di were able to find. The two of them leaned side by side against the wall and critiqued each one. Eventually, they settled on a slightly shorter, black version of the sausage coat.

Bah gathered up Sandy's sweaters and old jacket, which had been left hanging over the nearby rack and folded them in his arms. "Can I buy us all a coffee before I have to run? I need to be back by three to help set up tables and chairs," he added to Sandy.

"Tables and chairs for what?" Di asked.

The boys, Bah explained, were having a get together to celebrate Bill Baker's and Neal Broten's birthdays that night. Sandy was going too, even though she felt a little awkward going to a birthday party for people she didn't know, having never been introduced to Neal and only having met Bill once.

"It's not an invite-only kind of thing," Bah had told her the night before on the phone, when he had called and asked her to come. "People are bringing their wives and girlfriends and—you know, bringing other people. I doubt Brots is gonna turn around and throw you out just because he hasn't met you. Plus, Gayle's gonna be there—she's making a turkey and she's been talking about how she hasn't seen you for a while."

"I'll go," Sandy said, "but only because Gayle is going."

Bah had laughed. "Well, as long as you're coming, I guess."

It actually sounded like it would be fun, Sandy thought. She hadn't seen any other people from the hockey team since the trip to South Dakota other than Pav, who she still assumed harboured a deep hatred for her, even though Bah assured her that this was not true.

"So, is it also kind of a Thanksgiving thing?" Di asked.

Bah shrugged, holding the door of the nearby coffee shop he had selected for them open. "Not really. Billy says he's got a bunch of pheasant that he's wanting to cook up but hasn't gotten a chance to yet. Seems like there's gonna be a lot of meat."

Sandy, who hadn't really been listening, looked up at the mention of pheasant. "Pheasant? Like, the bird?"

Both Bah and Di peered at her, bewildered. "Yes, like the bird," Bah said.

"That he shot?"

Di cocked her head to the side as the three of them joined the queue for coffee. "No, that he's been raising in his living room. Of course he shot them. Are you telling me they don't have _hunting_ in Washington?"

"They do," Sandy said, "I just didn't—I've never known anyone who hunted their own food. Do _you_ know how to shoot birds?" she asked Bah.

He nodded. "Yes, I know how to shoot birds."

"Do _you_?" Sandy asked Di, who also nodded. "Does _everybody_?"

"Well, I mean, there's gotta be at least a few people who don't," Bah said. "Is it going to be a problem? Should I tell them to make you up a vegetable plate?"

She shook her head. "No, it's not a problem. There's just certain times when I think it's very obvious that I'm not from here, and today has been full of them."

Bah and Di both grinned at her and then exchanged that look of odd, Minnesota-based kinship that Sandy had gotten used to.

Once the drinks were purchased, Bah took off at a run, saying that time had gotten away from him and that his parking meter had likely expired, leaving Sandy and Di alone. They walked slowly back to Di's car, Sandy feeling a lot warmer in her new jacket.

"You're going to have so much fun," Di said, grinning as she sipped her hot chocolate. "You have to tell me all about it."

"I will," Sandy said. "But it's probably not going to be as glamorous as you think."

Di shot her a look. "Let me have this. I thought me and Peter were going to have _sex_ last night, and do you know what he did?"

"What?"

"He brought over two copies of the same newspaper so we could both read it at the same time _and talk about it_. I literally had to tell him, 'Peter, come over here and kiss me right now or you have to go home.'"

Sandy laughed. "I mean, I guess he's interested in current events, right? Are you still having fun with him?"

Di shrugged helplessly. "I don't know why, but yes. It makes me _want_ to read the paper so I can sit and have a conversation with him. And the stuff I don't know about, he tells me. And then I _learn_. I think—" she lowered her voice, looking around. "I think I'm falling for him."

Because Di seemed to think that this was a big reveal and not something that had been obvious from the beginning, Sandy raised her eyebrows. "Really?"

"I don't know how to feel about it," Di said. "He doesn't act like any other guy I've ever dated, and we spend so much time together that I'm sure he feels the same—"

Sandy cut her friend off with a shake of her head. "Of course he does," she said. "That's not even a question."

"I guess so," Di said. She started to say something else, but stopped herself, gazing curiously at Sandy. "Can I ask you something?"

Sandy nodded. "Sure. "

"When do you think you and Bah will be boyfriend and girlfriend, officially?"

This wasn't the direction Sandy had been expecting the conversation to go, and since it had been addressed so abruptly, she had no choice but to come up with a reply. Since Bah had left the house on the morning of the 18th, she had been thinking about her feelings for him and what they meant. "I don't know," she said, truthfully. "I don't even know if that's what _I_ want."

Di took a sharp breath. "Why?"

"It's just—this is going to sound stupid, but I didn't think about how much he'd be gone before," Sandy said. "And it all came up at once and it's—kind of overwhelming."

"You're—I'm sorry, but that doesn't make much sense to me," Di said. "If you weren't thinking about him being gone before, what did you think about when he was gone for basically this entire time?"

Sandy shrugged. "I guess I just thought that once he was done with this Olympic team, he would be around more, but that's not how it'll work. He'll have the summer off and then go right back to hockey until he retires. He won't even be around once the _Olympics_ are over. It's just going to be us living in the bits of time that he has before he has to leave again."

Di, who still looked a little perplexed at the idea of these concepts being new to Sandy, frowned. "And so you're not sure if you want to wait?"

"Right," Sandy said. "Or—well, I don't know." She rubbed her forehead. "Believe me, I know how dumb it sounds. It's just a lot of pressure to have it all figured out by the time he has to leave. And it doesn't help that we don't have long left before February. The whole thing feels like a doomsday countdown. You know, not to be dramatic or anything," she added, and Di laughed.

As they reached the car, Di asked, "what did you two decide when you started seeing each other? Did you talk about what would happen in February?"

"Not really. And honestly, I didn't expect to like him as much as I do. I thought maybe it would be a good way to take my mind off of Ray, but—" she shrugged. "It all got sort of out of control."

Di surveyed her friend for a moment and then breathed heavily out of her nose. "You're a romance novel," she said. "You're a romance novel and I'm just realizing how frustrating it must be to be the only logical person in one. You need to talk to him—sit down and have a conversation about these things, because talking about it with me won't help. Well, I guess it will, because we can both agree that I give great advice," she added, pulling the driver side door open and getting into the car.

Di was, of course, right. Sandy had no trouble admitting this. She knew that she needed to talk to Bah about her doubts, and the longer she waited, the more painful that conversation would be. A facet of it that Di didn't understand, in Sandy's opinion, was the timing of it. The way she saw it, it wouldn't make things any easier to spring it on Bah on, say, a night when the team had just lost a game. Or, on the other hand, a night that was supposed to be fun—like a birthday party for somebody on the team, perhaps. It needed to be a mood-neutral day, when nothing good or bad had happened.

By the time Sandy pulled up to the apartment complex that evening, she had all but entirely convinced herself that this terrible logic was correct. There was a time and a place for difficult conversations, and a birthday party was not one of them.

As she got out of the car she spotted Gayle, laden with a roasting pan and several grocery bags, staggering her way up the front walk of the building and jogged over. "Can I help you carry some of that?"

Gayle turned to her and blew a strand of hair away from her eyes. "I'm gonna _kill_ Buzzy. Where is he? Have you seen him? He said he'd be waiting out here to help me carry all this stuff in."

"No, I just got here," Sandy said, unlooping some of the bags from Gayle's arms. "What _is_ all this?"

As they came upon the door, Gayle paused. "Can you—do you mind just unlocking it? My keys are just—" she jerked her chin in the direction of her jacket pocket. As Sandy fished them out, Gayle continued, "this is the turkey I said I'd make, and the bags are all the extra stuff that the boys decided they _needed_ me to pick up on my way over. They were in Canada on Thanksgiving so I thought I dodged the turkey-making bullet. I was so sure I was safe."

"No such luck." Sandy grinned as she held the door open for Gayle.

The function room at the apartment complex was a long, echoey chamber that the boys had outfitted with five long tables at the center, with an additional two set up along the back wall for people to serve themselves food and drinks. Sandy noticed the pheasant that Bill Baker had cooked, already set out, and was surprised that they were so small before coming to terms with the realization that she didn't really know what a pheasant looked like.

Jack O'Callahan and Jack Hughes were huddled around a punch bowl at the end of the table, muttering to each other and looking around to see if anyone was watching. Hughes, seeing Sandy seeing them, beckoned her over.

"How's it going, Debbie? What's in the bags?"

Sandy heaved the bags onto the table and rooted through them. "Gayle's stuff. Looks like it's just snack food and drinks for the party." She looked back over her shoulder at the two boys, who were leaning together as if trying to hide the punch bowl. "What are you doing?"

O'Callahan grinned, showing off a gap where he was missing some teeth. "They told us to make punch. So we made a _special_ _recipe_."

"That sounds—" Sandy paused, moving around them and trying to see the contents of the punch bowl. "That sounds a little scary, guys."

"Nah, it's great," Hughes said. He grabbed a plastic cup and dipped it into the bowl, the contents of which looked, as far as Sandy could tell, just like normal punch. "Go ahead, try it."

She accepted the cup and took a small sip, coughing a little on the unexpectedly sweet taste. "That just tastes like fruit," she said. It wasn't bad, she thought, taking another drink.

"Atta girl." O'Cee clapped her on the back and helped himself to a cup of the punch, too. He drained half the cup in one gulp. "You know, it's funny—you can barely taste the vodka in this."

"Or the rum," Hughes added.

Sandy frowned at them, trying to determine whether they were joking before deciding that she didn't want to know. "Have you guys seen Bah?"

O'Cee shrugged. "No, but if he's not here, he's probably trying to help with the cooking in Magic's apartment. They were trying to make potatoes and vegetables so we don't all die of gout from all this gamey poultry."

"I think you get gout from red meat," Hughes said.

"Nobody told me you were a _doctor_ —hey, where are you running off to?" he called after Sandy, who was trying to slip away to let them argue. "Magic's apartment is 207."

"Thanks," Sandy said over her shoulder, ducking out of the function room and into the hallway.

Sandy polished off the last of her cup of punch as she knocked on Magic's apartment door. She remembered him having been mentioned before at some point, but couldn't recall his actual name, and so when the door swung open, revealing a shorter guy with a beaky nose and a shock of brown hair, she said, "are you—uh—Magic?"

The guy grinned. "Yeah. I also go by Mark. Who are you looking for?"

"Bah," she said. "I'm—"

Mark nodded and pulled the door open wider. "Debbie, right. I know about _you_. Come on in."

Sandy followed him into the apartment, which was laid out identically to Bah's. She could see people sitting on the couch, but she heard Bah's voice coming loudly from the kitchen.

"They're _mashed_ , that's the point. It's not _supposed_ to have lumps in it like that."

"That's how I grew up eating them and so that's how I'm gonna make them."

Bah was arguing with another hockey player who was hovering nearby, propped up on crutches. With his back to Sandy, Bah brandished a potato masher at the other guy. "You asked me to help, Sutes. Now, I'm gonna mash the hell out of these damn potatoes, and there's nothing—" He paused, glancing over his shoulder and noticing Sandy standing there. "Hey, you found me. How're you doing?"

"I'm good." Sandy peered into the pot where Bah was mashing the potatoes. "Why can't you just split it into two bowls and have one for each way?"

The two boys exchanged a look. "Go find another bowl," Bah told the other guy, and immediately grabbed him by the back of his shirt as he started to crutch away. "Wait!—this is Sandy. Sandy, this is Bob Suter. He's currently out of commission."

Bob balanced his crutch under his armpit and shook Sandy's hand. "Good to meet you."

"You too," she replied "I think I saw some extra bowls in the room with all the tables—I can grab one if you want, you don't have to go. I need to go get more punch, anyway."

"See, that's how you treat a guy on crutches," Bob told Bah as Sandy hurried back out of the apartment.

When she returned carrying a bowl and a replenished cup of punch, Bah was coming down the hallway. "I got you another mug," he said, holding it out to her. It featured a city skyline and the words "CALGARY, CANADA" in bright red font. He reached for her cup and poured its contents into the mug, splashing a bit onto the carpeted hallway before dragging her back into Mark's apartment to help carry food back into the function room.

It was immediately clear that whoever had set the tables up in the function room had overestimated the number of people attending the party. A few of the boys removed two of them and pushed the remaining three tables together, which left everyone sitting elbow to elbow, but the general consensus was that the overall effect was "cozier."

Sandy and Bah ended up sitting near the end of the tables, across from Mike Eruzione and his girlfriend, Donna, who extended a hand for Sandy to shake with a great jingling of bracelets against the table.

"It's the first time Mike's brought me around to any big get together with the team," Donna said. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say he's embarrassed of me."

"Oh trust me, baby, it's not you," Mike said.

Bah grinned at Sandy. "I'm sorry to have subjected you to such low quality people."

"Yeah, wouldn't want you to get the wrong idea about hockey players," Buzz said. "Or guys from Minnesota. Or guys from Boston. Or guys—"

Sandy cut him off. "I think I have a pretty good idea of all the people I should avoid now, thanks," she said, and the boys laughed.

Gayle and the boys had done a better job than Sandy had expected of putting together a nice meal. The pheasant was, as O'Cee had mentioned, a little gamey, and so she was glad for the turkey, but also for the knowledge of what pheasant actually tasted like. She was struck by an oddly festive feeling as she looked up and down the table at everyone talking and enjoying their food. "This is nice," she said quietly to Bah, who had to duck his head slightly in order to hear her over the noise in the room.

"You're having fun?" he asked, and he grinned when she nodded. "That's good." He followed her gaze up and down the table. "Kind of like having a big family dinner, right?"

It was, and Sandy could suddenly see the appeal of this life for someone like Gayle, who was not involved in actually playing hockey. She could imagine having a group of people who could all get together and have in common the fact that they were all tied to the unique way that hockey complicated a person's life. Maybe it was just the punch, but it felt a little like being in a secret club. Sandy didn't know how to explain this to Bah (although she imagined he probably felt the same way) without sounding odd, so she just nodded and smiled at him.

To the boys' credit, it took a while for the night to start unraveling. But as beer and punch continued to flow, the party started to feel a little like a rowdy evening at a bar.

People had long since stopped half-heartedly picking at the remaining food on the table when Pav scooped some mashed potatoes onto his spoon and flung them at Bill Baker, who wasn't watching. The potatoes splattered on his face and Bill retaliated by grabbing a roll, dabbing it in some gravy and hurling it at the other player.

Within seconds, the otherwise civilized dinner had turned into a foodfight. Everyone dug their hands into what was left of the food in front of them and started throwing it indiscriminately, and soon they were all splattered in cake and mashed potatoes.

Mike Eruzione had been doing a valiant job of trying to keep Donna from getting hit with food, fixing everyone who even glanced at her with a preemptively angry stare. In the process, his loudly-patterned shirt had become covered in cake and icing. He turned to his girlfriend and shook his head. "Couldn't even keep it together for one night. I'm tellin' ya, it feels like I'm babysitting most of the time."

Bob Suter, who was sitting on Mike's other side, heard this. Without missing a beat he reached up, holding his cup full of beer in the air, and dumped its entire contents on Mike's head. And Pav, who was just returning from the drinks table with a newly filled cup, followed suit.

The room fell silent, like they were a group of children who didn't know what level of shenanigans they could get away with. Surely, this seemed too far. Sandy stared across the table, wide-eyed, at Mike, who seemed to be having trouble formulating a response. He mopped at his face, which was starting to turn dark red, with a napkin.

Then someone at the other end of the tables let out a choked giggle, which spread all the way down to the other end until everyone was laughing, except for Mike, who looked as if he could commit a murder. Even Donna looked like she was fighting back the urge to smile.

Mike got to his feet, shoving his chair back so hard that it tipped over, and the laughter tapered off. "Donna, get your coat," he said. "We're going."

Donna stood, giving the rest of the table an apologetic look.

"C'mon, stay," Buzz said, his mouth in a severe line as he struggled to keep from smiling. "Just calm down, Mike. It's just a party."

But Mike, who had already made a big show of standing up, was committed to leaving. "I don't need this," he said. "I don't need this—this _aggravation_. You don't think I have other places I can be tonight? We're outta here." He clamped his elbow around Donna, who had returned with the coats. "Let's go."

Everyone turned to stare as Mike and Donna left the room. There was silence for a few moments before someone started snickering, which spread laughter through the tables again like wildfire.

"What a fuckin' goof."

"How convenient—buddy leaves just before we start cleaning up."

"Oh, we are gonna make _fun_ of him."

"'C'mon, Donna. We're leavin'. 's go. We're outta heah,'" Robbie said, mimicking Mike's Boston accent, sending everyone into a bout of fresh laughter before Pav started throwing the bones left on his plate and the supposedly "nice" dinner devolved once again into chaos.


	18. Chapter 18

**Saturnian Sorceress** \- Thanks for reading! You're very kind.

* * *

 **December 6 - 21, 1979**

" _Just hear those sleigh bells jinglin', ring-ting-tinglin' too, come on it's lovely weather for a—_ "

Sandy, who was trying to keep her eyes on the road, jabbed at the car radio button blindly until Bing Crosby fell silent. "Je _sus_ ," she muttered, peering through the falling snow and trying to catch a glimpse of a spot in the crowded Met Centre parking lot. It had been a risk to try and leave the grocery store and make it there in time for the game that night against Oklahoma City, but she had been determined. Puck drop was at 8pm, and Sandy was only a few minutes late thanks to some driving that would have likely put the fear of God into Richard Petty.

After a few minutes of searching, she located a spot in an area that looked to be about a mile away from the arena. Sandy ran all the way to the door, clutching the ticket Gayle had given her in her sweaty palm.

"You can come sit with me, don't use Bah's tickets. You'll be all by yourself," Gayle had said, pressing the ticket into her hand that Saturday, when Sandy and Bah had gone over to her and Buzz's house for dinner. "Neither of our parents are going to be there since it's a weeknight, so it'll just be us."

Gayle was turning around in her seat when Sandy came running up to their section. Sandy waited for a whistle and for the play to stop before hurrying down the stairs, as Bah had sternly instructed her to do when she mentioned that she might be late.

"Oh, thank _God_ ," Gayle said as Sandy sat down. "I was starting to get worried that you got in an accident or something. Were the roads bad?"

Sandy, who was starting to get used to people automatically asking her this question whenever she had been driving, shook her head. "Not really. It's just starting to come down a little more, though." She looked up at the scoreboard, which showed that the game was tied at a goal apiece and that she had made it halfway into the first period. "How's it going?"

"Good." Gayle sighed. "We've been doing laundry all day. I thought I was all caught up with everything so we could just go to Lake Placid and not worry about it, but Buzzy—" she paused, shaking her head and breathing heavily out of her nose, "Buzzy found three bags full of clothes in the trunk of the car that he threw in there and forgot. I could just—" Gayle made a strangling gesture in the air with her hands. "Wouldn't you notice if three bags' worth of your own clothes went missing?"

"Probably." Sandy laughed. "So, you got cleared with work to go out there?"

Gayle shrugged. "Not really. I'm taking those days without pay, but I don't care. I've barely gone to any out of town games this season, and it'll be nice to see Lake Placid before it gets overrun by people in February."

"I still don't really get what's going on," Sandy said. She had tried to get Bah to explain it to her and eventually just pretended to understand why the team was going to Lake Placid a few weeks early to participate in a tournament during the days leading up to Christmas. "They're going there to play the 'B' teams and not the teams they'll play during the Olympics?"

"Right," Gayle said. "It's basically so the boys can get used to the ice out there and end off before Christmas on a high note. Plus," she added, lowering her voice slightly, "it'll be nice to maybe at least _see_ them on a podium _in_ Lake Placid."

"How come?" Sandy asked, surprised. "Do you not think they'll do well in February?"

"Who knows?" Gayle said, shrugging again. "I mean, anything is possible if everybody shows up to play, but really there's only two medals that they could win."

"Why?"

"Well, the Soviets will probably win Gold, because they win everything, and so that leaves Silver and Bronze, but the Czechs and the Swedes have good teams too. Buzzy and I were talking about this the other day—he said he'd obviously like to win _something_ , but he said the realistic expectation is fourth or fifth, _maybe_ Bronze if something wild happens. Doesn't Bah stress about this stuff?"

Gayle didn't mean for the question to sound like a criticism, and so Sandy tried to not take it that way. The truth was that, apart from talking about how he was tired and sore, Bah seemed to avoid talking to Sandy about hockey altogether. He'd answer her questions if she asked, but she imagined that he'd gotten the impression somewhere that she didn't want to hear about it otherwise.

"What's wrong?" Gayle frowned, studying Sandy's face.

She shook her head. "Nothing. I was just thinking." Sandy was saved from having to further explain herself when another player cross-checked Buzz and Gayle stood up to shout at the referee.

The boys won the game 5-3, and while Sandy waited with Gayle for Bah and Buzz to come out of the dressing room, a long parade of parents, girlfriends, and wives came past to talk to Gayle.

"How do you know all of these people?"

Gayle smiled. "Oh, most of them are from Minnesota. I've met a lot of people over the years—you'll get used to it."

The two of them noticed Donna, Mike Eruzione's girlfriend, standing some distance away and waved at her. Donna waved back warily but did not come over to talk.

"Buzzy said they've been giving Mike a pretty hard time about the little fit he threw at the birthday party," Gayle said.

"He just wanted to take her to a nice party," Sandy said, feeling a little petty. "I felt kind of bad."

Gayle scoffed. "He should have known better. Maybe if he'd brought her out to meet everyone before the end of _November_ , it wouldn't have been such a shock." She grinned over at Sandy. "Nice girl, though. If I felt bad for anybody, it was her."

"Speaking of going out," Sandy said, trying to change the subject, "what are you and Buzz doing after this?"

"Going home to bed, unfortunately," Gayle said with a shake of her head. "I already checked—Buzz said he needs to get some sleep because he won't be able to on the plane."

The boys were leaving for Connecticut the next day, and so it was the last night they'd be home before the 19th, when the pre-Olympic tournament was over. After that, they'd have two days of team meetings and practices before they were set free for a short Christmas holiday. Sandy had taken to standing in front of Bah's schedule, obsessively counting the remaining days and hoping that her math was wrong. It never was.

When a crowd of boys came up the stairs, Bah and Buzz among them, Bah immediately noticed the morose expression on Sandy's face.

"What's going on?" he asked, after the Schneiders had left.

Sandy shook her head. "Do you have to go home right now? Can we go get something to eat or—or something?"

Bah nodded. "Of course."

They got into Sandy's car and he directed her to a truck stop diner on the way out of Bloomington. Once they were seated in a booth with menus to peruse, Bah nudged Sandy's leg under the table with the toe of his shoe.

She looked up. "What?"

"You might as well just tell me."

He was right. Everyone else was always right, she thought with a sigh. "I've just been worrying a lot," Sandy said, shrugging. "I haven't found the right moment to bring it up."

"Okay," Bah said. "What's wrong with right now? What are you worrying about?"

Sandy looked down at the table for a moment before glancing back up at him. "What do you think will happen in February when you have to leave?"

He didn't look surprised to hear this question. In fact, judging by the faintly smug expression that flitted across Bah's face, Sandy assumed that he'd already known that this was the issue. "I've been thinking about that, too. Honestly, I'm just not sure what's going to happen yet. And I know that's not the most satisfying answer," he said, noticing the look on her face, "but it's the only one I have for you."

She frowned. He was right again—this did nothing to make her feel any better. "What do you _want_ to have happen?"

"Well," Bah said, narrowing his eyes as he thought about it. "Do you mean with us, or just in general?"

"Both?"

He put his elbow on the table and rested his chin in his hand. "I guess ideally I'd get picked up by a team and get to keep playing for a few more months. But that sort of depends on how it goes in Lake Placid, and so, like I said—" he shrugged, "nothing is really definite right now. And with us," he said, gesturing at the two of them, "I'd like—" Bah stopped talking abruptly, fixing Sandy with an odd stare.

"What?" she asked, surprised.

"Well, I was just trying to figure out how to say this last part to you without it sounding—you know—without scaring the hell out of you."

Sandy grinned and shrugged. "I think knowing that you have something scary to say is worse than hearing you say something scary. Just say it."

He sighed and fidgeted with his hands for a moment before smacking them on the table. "Okay. In terms of where we'll be in February, my ideal scenario would involve me going to play somewhere close enough that I'd still get to see you sometimes, and then coming back here in the summer to train. And then when the summer is over…" he trailed off, glancing up at Sandy. "I don't know. Maybe you could come with me."

Sandy felt heartened at how this revelation only filled her with the slightest bit of cold dread. She started to reply, but the waitress returned to take their orders, holding up a notepad expectantly. After they had both ordered cheeseburgers and the waitress walked away, Sandy turned back to Bah and cleared her throat.

"Well, where do you think we'd go?"

Bah looked taken aback at this response. He screwed up one side of his mouth and frowned. "I'm not sure. I mean, if we're being realistic, it'll probably be a team in the AHL, and that's all over on the east coast. But if I get really lucky and get picked up by a team in the NHL, that could be anywhere." He shrugged again. "It's hard to make plans because I have no idea what's going to happen."

Sandy leaned back in her seat. "You have _no_ idea at all? You're not being—I don't know—scouted, or whatever?"

"Well, yeah. People call and talk to my agent sometimes, but—"

"You have an _agent_?"

He nodded. "Yeah, Art. I have to have mentioned _Art_ at some point. He's been around. He represents a lot of guys on the team. Art."

It didn't really matter how many times Bah said his name. Sandy had never heard of this man before. She shook her head. "Nope. That's another thing that's been bugging me—why don't you ever talk to me about this stuff?"

Bah looked confused. "What, about Art?"

"About _any_ of it," she said. "You'll tell me the scores of the games and whether you got any points and how your bones are sore, but it's not—" Sandy was interrupted by the waitress returning and refilling their glasses of water. She stopped talking and looked away from Bah. "Thank you."

There was a somewhat uncomfortable silence after the waitress walked away. Bah frowned down at the surface of the table. "I'm not sure what you mean," he said.

"Tonight, Gayle rattled off this long explanation of how she thinks you guys will do in February, and I had no idea what she was talking about. I felt like an idiot, because I don't know anything about the background of any of this," she waved her hand at Bah and he half-smiled in spite of himself.

"So, okay. What's the solution? Should I run through the roster of every team we're playing and make sure you're in the know about everything? Do you want the stats of all the Soviets? I can borrow some of the tapes Herbie makes us watch. I guess if I have to know all of this stuff, you should too. That's only fair."

Sandy folded her arms. "You asked what I was worried about, and so I told you. I'm not sure why you're making fun of me."

Bah reached across the table and rested his hands under her elbows in a slightly awkward gesture. "I'm not making fun of you. Honestly, I had no idea you even cared."

"That's just it, though," Sandy said. "I don't understand how you can have all these rough plans where I move with you to somewhere on the east coast next year and _not_ think that I care. When I think about how Gayle and—"

"So _don't_ think about how Gayle and Buzzy are," Bah said, cutting her off. "Forget them. Those two have been together since they were kids. The things that she knows are from being a part of all this—" he gestured at himself, "since before she was done high school. We haven't even known each other for a year. They're a good couple, but a terrible frame of reference."

He had a point, but it didn't do much to make Sandy feel better. She sighed. "Am I being an idiot?"

He shook his head. "Of course you're not. I get it—I'll make more of an effort to talk to you about what's going on. I guess maybe I was an idiot to think that you didn't care about any of it."

"We're both idiots," Sandy said, and he grinned and shrugged his agreement.

A few minutes later, the waitress returned with their burgers and they ate in companionable silence. As she was finishing her food, Sandy looked up and saw Bah frowning at her again.

"What?"

"What should I get you for Christmas? Is there anything you want?"

"Nothing. I don't need anything. What?" she said again, as Bah rolled his eyes and bit into his burger.

"I didn't ask what you _needed_ ," he said, around a mouthful of food. He paused to swallow before continuing. "That's not fun. I asked what you _wanted_. It's Christmas—why wouldn't I go and buy you something dumb?"

"Because I don't need—" She stopped short as Bah narrowed his eyes threateningly. "Let me think about it."

Part of why Sandy didn't want to establish a precedent of gift giving with Bah was that she had never been any good at choosing good gifts for other people. Christmas had always been a utilitarian affair in the Benton household, and that upbringing was reflected in how she and Will both addressed the holidays as adults.

"Will got me three pairs of socks every year until I said something about it," Jenny said, carefully handing more Christmas lights to Will, who was on top of a ladder outside of the house. It was three days later and Bah was gone to the east coast and would remain there for another week and a half. "Just three pairs of socks and that's all. Not even a card. I thought I did something wrong." She folded her arms and looked up at Will.

"You said you were going to keep one hand on the ladder, Jay," Will said, barely breaking his concentration to glance down at the ground, where Jenny rolled her eyes and rested an obliging hand on the ladder. "And anyway, nobody should ever complain about getting socks. Some people don't _have_ socks, you know."

Jenny rolled her eyes again. "... which is exactly what _I_ got when I suggested we try giving each other 'fun' gifts instead. Guilt."

"Well, I'm not getting him guilt," Sandy said. "He said it should be fun. I'm just not sure how to go about finding him something."

"Maybe you should give him back all the mugs that are taking up space in my cupboard," Will said. "That would be _fun_." He had taken, on an almost-daily basis, to opening the cupboard which had become home to all of Sandy's new mugs and shaking his head, full of quiet discontent. The newest addition was bright orange, oversized, and had the words "EVERYTHING'S BIGGER IN TEXAS" printed on the side. Bah had forgotten it in his suitcase after coming home from Houston in November.

" _Hey_ ," Jenny said, gently shaking the ladder. "Don't be grumpy. Don't take it out on everyone else because you didn't think to put up the lights until the middle of December."

Will gripped the edge of the roof and grimaced. "You're supposed to be helping."

"I _am_ helping."

It didn't seem to Sandy that she would get any help from them, and so she went back into the house. She was too embarrassed to admit to Jenny that she had actually purchased a pair of socks that were patterned similarly to Bah's hockey socks at a clothing store the previous day. It had seemed like a fun gift at the time, but the fact remained that Sandy had bought Bah socks for Christmas.

She spent the remaining eleven days that Bah was away agonizing about what additional thing or things that she needed to buy to give a pair of socks some fun holiday sparkle. By the time the 20th rolled around, she had made little progress. Although Bah had gotten home the night before, he and the boys were having their team Christmas celebration, which was strictly for players only, and so Sandy had made plans with him to exchange gifts the next day, before Bah was free to go home to see his family.

"I'm not going to ask you to come up there with me," Bah had told her while they had made these plans on the phone shortly after he'd gotten home. "I'm assuming you would have asked to come if you wanted to."

This was an accurate assessment, but Sandy didn't know to say this without sounding rude. "Wouldn't it be weird if I just showed up? Just some girl no one knows?"

"Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news," Bah said, "but they know who you are. My family knows about you."

"They do?"

"Of course they do. _Your_ family knows about me, don't they?"

"I guess you're right," she said, feeling ridiculous. "I just think it might be awkward to meet them all for the first time when—"

"Hey, I get it," Bah said. "You don't have to come up with a tidy reason or anything. You're busy over the holidays. That's all I've been saying."

Sandy couldn't decide how to feel about this conversation with Bah. She appreciated him for understanding the fact that she wasn't comfortable meeting his family yet, but also felt disappointed in herself for not considering that Bah might have _wanted_ her to. It was a logical thing to want—after all, they had been _together_ , in whatever capacity that they were, for almost six months. There was a much larger context in Bah's life that she fit into, regardless of how much she acknowledged it. The truth, whether she wanted to ignore it or not, was that she probably should have wanted to meet his family and didn't.

Sandy carried this thought with her all through the next day. She worked absent-mindedly through a shift at the store, and when she was done and got into the car, she noticed that the gas tank was nearly empty. "Shit," she said, and pulled into the nearest gas station.

While waiting in line to pay for her half-tank of gas, Sandy spotted some novelty flashlights on a shelf with other impulse purchase-type merchandise. One of them was shaped like a hockey stick, with a button along the side to activate the light.

It definitely didn't add much to Sandy's gift in the way of sparkle, but she bought it anyway.

It was very late when Sandy awoken by a knocking sound. She lay still in bed, wondering if she had imagined the noise before it came again, louder. Sandy sat up and jumped as she heard the knocking for a third time, now distinctly coming from the window, this time ending in a dull screeching sound.

When she pulled the curtains back, Sandy caught Bah standing out in the snow with a rake held high above his head, ready to use it again to knock at the window. He paused, seeing her, and let it fall out of his hand. Under his other arm was a wrapped present. Sandy looked over her shoulder at the pair of socks and flashlight on her dresser and sighed.

"I was worried that wasn't your window," Bah said, in a loud and conversational voice when Sandy let him into the house. He leaned in unsteadily, ostensibly to kiss her, breathing his entire night's drink selection into her face.

She shushed him. "God, you smell like a bar." She peered around him at the street, looking for his car. "You didn't drive here, did you?"

Bah shook his head. "Nah. I'm responsible. I got Buzzy to drop me off."

She led him into the kitchen, and they stood in the dim light of the moon through the window as Sandy filled up a glass of water for him. Bah set the present down on the floor, accepted the glass, drained it, and motioned for her to move so he could fill it back up.

"How was the Christmas party?" she asked a moment later in a whisper, watching him warily as he filled the glass for a third time.

"It was good. Here, look," he said, unzipping his jacket and revealing that he was wearing a gold medal around his neck. He lifted it over his head and put it on Sandy. "We won the Fake Olympics."

Sandy raised her fists in the air in celebration and he snorted. "Really, though, congratulations," she said, examining the medal. "You should be proud of this."

"I'm proud. I _am_ proud," he said. "I'll be prouder to bring you another one at the end of February. Might not be as shiny as this one, though. What colour are the ones they give out for fifth place, green?" He was speaking at regular volume again.

She raised a finger to her lips. "Will and Jenny are sleeping."

Bah mimicked her. "I'm being quiet. Look—here, I got you something else," he said, nudging the gift on the floor towards her with his toe.

Sandy picked it up. The gift consisted of a thin, square package that was clearly a record and a second smaller box. The two were fastened together with an abundance of tape and ribbon. She started to unwrap the smaller box and paused. "Can I give you mine first? I didn't wrap them."

He nodded, and she hurried back into her bedroom to retrieve the socks and flashlight. When she turned around, she saw that Bah had followed her, still clutching his glass of water and carrying his gift by one of the ribbons holding the packages together. Sandy jumped and barely stifled a yelp behind her hand.

Bah shushed her. "Will and Jenny are _asleep_ ," he said in a stage whisper, closing the bedroom door behind him. "I hope this won't come as a surprise, but I would like to sleep here tonight."

"I thought as much," Sandy said. She gestured with her chin at the bed, holding her gifts behind her back, and Bah obediently sat down, being careful not to spill his water. "Now, like I said, these aren't wrapped because I didn't think I'd see you until tomorrow."

"A great excuse," Bah said, and held his hand out. She presented her Benton-esque Christmas gifts and dropped down next to him on the bed.

Bah examined the socks. "Socks," he said. "Oh—they look like my—" He pointed at his shins, where his hockey socks would have been.

"I know," Sandy said.

"Is that why you got them?"

She nodded, fiddling with the flashlight as he continued to turn the socks over in his hands, as if there were anything else to discover about them. "And socks are a practical gift. Everybody needs socks."

"All right, Will." He reached down and removed the socks he had been wearing, flinging them into the corner of the room. He pulled the new ones on and held his legs up in the air for Sandy to inspect. "Pretty good?"

"Real handsome," Sandy said, reaching out and taking the glass of water from Bah. She placed it on the bedside table before handing him the flashlight.

He examined it closely. "I've seen these before at gas stations," he said. "And I never have enough change in my pocket to buy one on top of getting gas. How did you know?"

Sandy laughed. "Well, I definitely did get it at a gas station, so I'm glad you like it. I'm sorry they aren't the best gifts."

Bah shook his head. "They're _great_. Thank you—you didn't really need to get me anything. I realize that this was more _my_ idea. Here," he said, dragging his gift up onto the bed by the ribbon. "Open mine."

She opened the smaller box and pulled out another mug. This one was very plain, just white with brown flecks. "You know," she said, "Will is very upset that I keep bringing these into his home."

He took it from her and cradled it in his hands. "Well, that's half the fun of giving them to you. I know it's not a really exciting one, but I have an excuse," he said. "I stole it from our hotel in Lake Placid. I had planned to go and find you a nice one from a gift shop with mountains or whatever on it during the weekend but I didn't have time, so on the morning we left I just put it in my suitcase."

"You're a criminal." Sandy grinned.

He shrugged impressively. "Well, then, you're complicit. Don't drink out of it in public."

"Okay," she said. She held up the thin, square gift. "This one is a record, right?"

Bah reached over and snatched it out of her hands, nearly dropping the mug in the process. "Right. It's a record. Do you want to try and guess what it is?"

She thought about it. "Bob Dylan?"

"No, but dammit," Bah said. "That would have been good for an actual, serious gift. Guess again. Should be really obvious."

"Oh," Sandy said, realizing. "Of course. We don't have any Blondie in the house."

He handed back the gift. "Now you do. Or maybe not—I don't know, you haven't opened it yet."

Sandy tore the paper away, revealing _Eat to the Beat_ and laughed. "I'm so glad that nickname stuck."

Bah grinned. "Me too. Merry Christmas, Debbie." He leaned across the bed and kissed her. "I'm sorry I'm drunk for our gift exchange. Sorry it's so late. I just wanted to see you tonight."

"It's okay," she said. "I don't mind. I'm glad you came over."

He didn't seem to be paying attention anymore; he was gazing up at the wall where Sandy had pinned his calendar. It was odd that he had never noticed it there in all the times he had been in her room, Sandy thought, as he clumsily got to his feet and moved to look at it. "Are you counting down the days?" he asked.

She moved to join him in front of the calendar, standing on her toes to rest her chin on his shoulder. "Yep. What are we at, forty-nine days?"

"Forty-eight," he corrected. "Technically it's already tomorrow."

"Technically. Now count the scary ones." She pointed to a day with a "B" in the corner.

They both silently counted, both arriving at the same conclusion—there was less than a month left, even counting the days when Bah would only be around for a part of the day.

"Pretty scary," Bah said in a loud voice, making Sandy jump.

There was a soft knock at the door. Bah pulled it open, revealing Jenny standing there in a robe. "I don't want to rain on your Christmas party or anything," she said, "but Will is gonna come in here and strangle both of you to death if you don't go to bed. Congratulations on winning gold, sort of," she added to Bah.

He grinned. "Thanks so much, sort of."

Sandy pulled Bah back a few steps by the back of his shirt. "Sorry. We'll keep it down."

When Sandy finally convinced Bah to go to sleep, it was nearly three in the morning. He stretched out on the bed like an anaconda, digging his elbow into Sandy's ribs. He mumbled an apology. "Not a lot of room, huh? Seems smaller than the last time I was here."

"Agreed," Sandy replied, trying unsuccessfully to pull the blanket around her shoulders. "That's what happens when you put two adults on a child-sized bed."

"That and… other things," Bah said, trying to roll over and pull her closer. Then he burped and groaned and abruptly let go. "No, better not. I'm gonna throw up all over you."

"Oh, sexy."

He laughed, rolled over into his back and sighed. They were quiet for a moment before he spoke again. "This has been such a weird year."

"Good weird or bad weird?" Sandy asked, trying to get comfortable under Bah's arm.

"Great weird," he said. "If you'd asked me last Christmas that I'd be doing any of what I'm doing now, I'd have thought you were nuts." He was quiet for a long moment before adding, in a sleepy voice, "I'm sure you feel the same way."

Sandy considered this. A year ago, she had still been in Washington, still with Ray, still happy in that life. It was a few months before things started going downhill. "It's definitely not where I thought I'd be," she said. "But I'm glad I'm here."

"... And who knows what'll happen in another year," Bah said, now sounding a little like he was about to doze off. "That's a really long time."

"Yeah." Sandy glanced across the room in the direction of the calendar on the wall. A year _was_ a long time, but she imagined that even Bah would agree that forty-eight days was not.


	19. Chapter 19

Whoops!

 **BlurredHorizon** \- _You_ are the one who is great! I hope you haven't given up on me. Thanks again for reading. :)

* * *

 **Chapter 19 - January 5 - 18, 1980**

Bah asked, "was this the plan when you told me to come over? Have I been an idiot?"

" _No_ ," Sandy said.

This wasn't a lie. Sandy hadn't known that the two of them were being put to work until just moments after telling Bah to come over. When she had mentioned their plans to Jenny, Will had appeared suddenly in the kitchen as if he had teleported there, making both women jump.

"Well, when he's here, you might want to see if he'd be interested in helping you shovel our driveway. You know, just so you guys can balance out your lawn care contributions." Will had never forgiven Sandy and Bah for the time that he and Sandy had spent shoveling leaves into bags in the days following Bah's weekend visit.

"It's his day off," Sandy had said. "He's not going to want to shovel snow."

"Nobody _wants_ to. Somehow we all end up doing it."

And so Will and Jenny had set out for a doctor's appointment for a few hours, spinning the car's tires on the freshly fallen snow as they left, leaving Sandy with instructions to deal with everything on the front walk and the driveway.

Bah paused, resting his elbow on the top of his shovel for support, watching as Sandy trudged down the driveway, the handle of the shovel digging into her stomach as she pushed the snow. They had been unable to find anything to keep their ears warm in the bag of winter accessories Jenny kept by the front door, and so Bah had rooted in the trunk of his car and pulled out two hockey socks.

The makeshift hat smelled not-so-subtly of sweat and had a habit of sliding down Sandy's forehead and over her eyes and nose, and so she stopped at the end of the driveway to shove it back into position. "I'd rather just freeze my ears off," she said in a quiet voice that Bah nevertheless heard.

"You're _welcome_ for the _hat_."

"What hat?"

They continued shoveling rows down their respective sides of the driveway until there was one final strip of snow left to move.

"Okay. Go ahead," Bah said, motioning at the snow with his shovel.

"It isn't _mine_. I did more than you." Sandy pointed at her side of the driveway which was, in fact, three rows narrower than Bah's.

Bah scoffed. "You did _not_. I'm beating you."

"You're _not_."

"Well, someone has to do it."

"Yeah, and I think it should be you."

"I think it should be _you_."

The two of them argued for a while before they started to get chilly from standing around. It was eventually decided that Will should be the one to handle the final strip of snow (it _was_ his driveway, after all), and they put their shovels away and went inside, satisfied with a job well done.

Bah sat on the floor in the entrance of the house and pulled his boots off, groaning like an old man. "I wish you'd have told me that you were gonna put me to work."

"I didn't _know_ ," Sandy said, hanging her coat up and reaching down to pull Bah's off. "Don't you feel better for having had a little exercise today?"

"No. I already had a two-hour practice this morning. That's just something people say to make it seem like they don't hate shoveling." He held out a hand and she tugged him to his feet.

Sandy wandered into the kitchen and pulled a cupboard open. "Well," she said, "I guess maybe you shouldn't live in Minnesota. Hot chocolate?"

"Obviously."

Once they were seated at the table with their steaming mugs, Sandy was able to get a closer look at Bah. She noticed that he looked exhausted again, similar to the way he had when she'd first met him. The bags under his eyes were darker, and he seemed to droop in a way that didn't seem related to being upset about shovelling.

He noticed her staring and frowned. "What?"

"Nothing," she said and looked away, before remembering Bah's promise to talk more about what was going on in his life. "How was practice?"

"It was—" he paused, trying to find the words. "It was a lot. Everybody's on edge right now."

"Why?"

Bah took a careful sip from his mug as he considered this. "More cuts," he said. "The _last_ ones. Herb has to have the team finalized soon and so we're all—"

"Wait, what?" Sandy cut him off. "You _still_ don't know if you made this team?" Bah had mentioned to her the various times at which more guys had been sent home—a goalie named Steve who Sandy had never gotten to meet was sent down months earlier, Neal Broten's younger brother Aaron and another guy named Tim kept leaving and being brought back, and most recently someone named Delich who had played at the U had been let go. After each of these, Sandy tried to count in her head the number of players who were remaining, but she always forgot a few. She had been so sure that there were only twenty left.

Bah shook his head and grinned. "Nope. We have two more to go."

Sandy let out a low whistle. "Stressful."

"You bet."

"So, then," she said, wrapping her hands around her warm mug, "who do you think it'll be? Do you think it'll be you?"

"God, I don't know." He rubbed his face with both hands. "I've been running it over and over in my head at night. I'm almost at a point where I think it'll be okay, just because of the line I'm on. He can't get rid of me or Buzzy because we're the only guys who could figure out how to play with Pav. He's not going to get rid of Buzzy, so if it _was_ me, it'd have to be both me _and_ Pav, and I don't think he's gonna let Pav go, either. We've been playing together since the fall—I just don't see why Herb would mess around with that line, especially since the other lines change all the time and we haven't." Bah had been gesturing with his hands while he spoke. He dropped them heavily on the table and sighed again. "I don't know. It could be two forwards, or a forward and a defenseman. Might be me because I'm not a big goal scorer, but it might not be because my line works well together. So," he said, sounding like someone wrapping up a lecture. "I guess it would be nice if you would just figure out who's going home so I could get some sleep."

Sandy frowned, trying to work out what he had just said. "It's like a logic puzzle," she said, and Bah snorted. "Really, though, I wish I could tell you it'll be fine. You look—"

"Oh, just awful; I know," Bah interrupted. "I feel about that good, too. But I always do around this time of year. It's just tense."

There was a moment of silence during which a thought occurred to Sandy, and she struggled to figure out how to word her question without sounding insensitive. "If it _is_ you," she began, "if you _do_ get cut, where will you go? What happens?"

Bah let out an odd little laugh and rested his elbow on the table. "Well, that's another thing," he said. "I guess I would either go home or stay here and keep paying rent on my apartment. Or I guess I could get picked up by a team and play out the rest of the season. If not, I guess I'd have to try and find a job until the fall." He looked miserable at this thought.

She reached across the table to grab his hand, but at that moment Will and Jenny came home. Will burst through the front door, saying in a loud voice that startled both Sandy and Bah, " _why_ did you leave a single strip of snow down the middle of my driveway?"

In the days that followed, the prospect of Bah being one of the last players cut cast a deeply dramatic shadow over Sandy's life. For one, she was unsure how to feel about the prospect of Bah's hockey season potentially being over in a few weeks. Sandy doubted that this was what he had intended for her reaction to be, but she had felt a small glimmer of excitement at the idea of him having to spend January until September within walking distance. It would be a perfect way for them to figure out their relationship without having the distraction of week-long trips to faraway cities and late-night flights and arrivals.

Of course, she wasn't _supposed_ to feel this way. Sandy knew this without even considering the sad look that came over Bah's face at the idea of having to get a job like a regular human being. And it wasn't that she _wanted_ Bah to get cut. She was just willing to see a bright side to the possibility of this happening. Sandy obviously wanted Bah to go to the Olympics after all the months he had spent practicing and training. It was, when the facts were boiled down, the only reason why he was there in the first place, and he deserved to be happy and successful.

But she didn't think she was a criminal for acknowledging that Bah remaining in Minnesota would have some positive consequences.

When Bah returned from a string of games in Oklahoma and Texas, the two cuts still hadn't been made.

"We figure it'll be sometime in the next couple of days," Bah said, taking a bite out of one of the sandwiches he'd made for the two of them. She had picked him and Pav up at the arena and driven them back to the apartment complex. Pav had disappeared into his room and closed the door, through which they could hear him practicing the guitar. "But, I guess, we thought they'd make the decision after the _last_ bunch of games, so who knows?"

"Do you guys _talk_ about it? Isn't that sort of awkward since you're all competing for the same spots?"

"I think it would be more awkward if we didn't talk about it," Bah said. "It's not a secret or anything. And, I mean, there are guys who definitely _aren't_ going home, and so I'll bet they feel a little more comfortable discussing the odds. Anyway, let's not talk about that. Tell me about how your—"

He was interrupted by the intercom buzzing, and got up to buzz back. "Yeah?"

"Bah, it's Art. Can I come up? I have something you might be interested in hearing."

Sandy glanced over her shoulder at Bah and saw that his face had become stony. "Agent?" she mouthed at him, and he nodded. "Should I go?" she asked out loud, and Bah shook his head.

"Okay, come on up," he said to the intercom, buzzing Art in. Then he turned to Sandy. "So, what do you figure the chances are that this is good news?"

"I don't know," Sandy said. "What do you think?"

Bah reached over Sandy's shoulder, grabbed the remaining bite of her sandwich, and ate it. "Could be anything," he said, his mouth full, but Sandy saw no reason to be convinced of this on his face. He hurriedly took both of their plates and put them into the sink.

"Should I leave? I can come back later."

He shook his head again as there was a knock at the door. "Just stay there," he said, and went to open it. A stocky man with a pile of black hair came in, extending his hand to shake with Bah as he did.

"How's it going, Bah?" the man, presumably Art, asked.

"Oh, I can't complain. How about you?" Bah replied, gesturing for Art to come in.

"Well, I've just been talking with Herb for half the day yesterday and this morning, and—" Art stopped short, having noticed Sandy sitting at the table. "You should have said you had company over, Bah."

Bah waved a hand at Sandy as if she were a large decorative vase. "Ah, that's just Sandy. She's okay."

Sandy stood as Art came at her with his hand outstretched. "Nice to meet you, Sandy," he said, pumping her hand up and down.

"You too," she said, smiling. "You know, _I can go_ ," she said yet again to Bah, who rolled his eyes theatrically.

"You don't _have_ to—" he began, but Art turned and looked over his shoulder at Bah, and the two seemed to communicate telepathically for a moment. "Well," Bah said, looking away and back at Sandy, "maybe you'd better go check and see what Pav's doing for a minute or two. We won't be long, right Art?"

Art shook his head. "Not ten minutes."

She went down the hallway and obediently knocked on Pav's door. "Come in?" she heard him say.

Sandy had never seen the inside of Mark Pavelich's bedroom before, and she resisted the urge to look around and snoop as she hovered in the doorway. "Sorry," she said. "Bah's agent is out there and I wanted to give them some privacy. Can I hang out with you for a minute?"

Pav frowned. He was sitting on the corner of the bed with his guitar balancing on his knees. Sandy imagined he was probably wondering why she didn't just go sit in Bah's room, and she thought for a moment that he'd tell her that, but in the end he nodded and motioned for her to come in. "Shut the door," he said. "You said Art's here?

Sandy nodded. She wasn't sure where she was allowed to be in this room, since there were no chairs and she felt sort of uncomfortable sitting with him on the bed.

Pav looked immediately exhausted with her and stood, gesturing with his chin at the bed. "Go ahead," he said, and Sandy did, perching on the corner of the mattress. "So, what's going on?"

"He said he was talking with Herb and that he had to talk to Bah about something. I just thought it was better that I wasn't around, and I think Art did too."

Pav grunted, crouching to put his guitar back into its case. "I wouldn't take that too personally. I doubt Art knows who you are to Bah."

Resisting the urge to say, "neither do I," Sandy nodded. "What do you think they're talking about?"

He closed his guitar case. "I'd say it's really good or really bad. It's obviously about the cuts—I'm not sure he'd show up and scare Bah like that if it wasn't."

"You're sure?" She strained her ears, trying to make out what Bah and Art were saying in the living room. Pav was silent, too, politely letting her attempt to eavesdrop.

After it became clear that they wouldn't be able to hear anything, he straightened up and shrugged. "And he said he'd been talking to Herb. Art and Herb don't really have a lot in common other than us."

She heard Bah's voice rise sharply in the living room and Pav raised his eyebrows at her. "He wouldn't yell at this guy if he was getting cut, would he?" she asked.

"Not at Art, no." Pav replied. "It's probably good news."

Sandy started to get up and paused halfway through the movement. "Should I go out there?"

Pav shrugged yet again. "I don't know, _should_ you?"

"I love our talks," Sandy said before she could stop herself, earning a rare smile out of Pav.

"I would just wait for him to leave," Pav said. After a moment they heard the sounds of someone leaving the apartment, followed by someone moving rapidly from the living room down the hallway.

Bah nearly kicked the door down in his haste to get in the room . He pointed at Sandy. "Grab your coat," he said. "Both of you. We're going out. Somebody call Buzzy and Gayle, too."

He started to disappear from the doorway, but Sandy grabbed him by the elbow and dragged him back into the room . "Just hang on. What did he say?"

Bah blinked at her. "Hmm? Oh, Art? He just said I was going to Lake Placid next month."

Sandy felt immense relief, and then a secondary, somewhat more selfish relief at knowing that, deep down in her subconscious mind, she hadn't _really_ hoped that Bah would be cut. She hugged him, as Pav got to his feet and shook Bah's free hand.

Gayle and Buzz Schneider met the three of them at Hubert's, the bar that Bah had taken Sandy to on her birthday.

"It's good news for all three of us, you know," Bah explained while Buzz and Pav were away from the table getting them all drinks, "because if he decided to keep me, then that basically confirms that he's going to keep Buzzy and Pav, too. Not that I was worried about them," he added, nodding at Gayle.

She scoffed. "Yeah, I'm sure you weren't worried in the same way that Buzz hasn't been worried. I didn't know that a person could stay alive for as long as he's gone without a full night's sleep."

When the other boys returned to the table, the conversation quickly turned to _who_ , exactly, the last cuts would be. Names were bandied about for a while before it seemed to dawn on the three players that, if Art knew for sure that Bah _had_ made the team, he probably also knew who _hadn't_ , and if the roster was finalized, the two players being cut were probably being cut at that very moment.

"I can't believe you didn't _ask_ Art who was going. He _must_ know," Buzz said.

Bah shook his head as he took a sip of beer. "Well, I was a little preoccupied. I keep his business card in my wallet, if you think maybe I should give him a call."

"He probably wouldn't answer a phone call tonight. I bet he's had to talk so much with Herb over this past year that his heart skips every time it rings."

The political hockey talk continued for a while, and Sandy took the opportunity to watch Bah. He looked happier and more vital than he had for the past while, as if he'd gotten a full night's sleep from his conversation with Art. He still didn't look good, though. Glancing at the other two boys, Sandy noticed that they seemed a little more deflated than usual as well, and she wondered if sports really were good for a person's health.

"So does this mean that you're going to be in Lake Placid in February, too?" Gayle asked Sandy when there was a break in the conversation.

Sandy hadn't considered this. "I—uh—I don't really know," she said. "Does everybody go?"

Gayle shrugged. "Well, parents and family go, obviously, and then wives and girlfriends go too, depending on—" She hesitated, and exchanged a glance with Bah that Sandy wasn't quick enough to follow before continuing, "depending on schedules and you know, everything."

"We hadn't really talked about it," Sandy said, also turning to look at Bah.

He seemed surprised at the attention. "I mean, it's up to you," he said. "I know tickets and rooms aren't cheap."

"And we all know how much you _hate_ hockey," Buzz added.

"I do _not_ hate—"

"Besides, all our games will be on TV anyway."

"Oh, but that's nothing like _being there_ ," Gayle said. She took a sip of beer. "Anyway, it's going to be strange to not see you all the time once this team is done playing."

Bah grinned and nudged Sandy with his elbow. "Yeah. Better get your time in with us while you can. Who the hell even knows where we'll be this time next year?"

Following this comment, there was an odd shift in Gayle that Sandy only seemed to notice. She fidgeted in her seat, looking over at Buzz, who wasn't paying attention, and then stared down into her lap. For the rest of the night, Sandy caught Gayle watching her, staring intently at her like she was trying to read her mind.

The following Wednesday night, Gayle invited Sandy to come to the boys' game against the University of Wisconsin, but it wasn't exactly an enjoyable time. She seemed to be halfway committed to saying something to Sandy all throughout the night, a few times even turning and starting to speak before losing her nerve and changing the direction of her sentence to something else.

The boys won their game 6-2, but Sandy and Gayle didn't have a chance to visit with them after it was over. The game had run a little late, and they were due to catch a flight to Texas that night. Bah could only wave tiredly at Sandy from across the parking lot as they loaded their bags onto the bus.

When Sandy got back into the car, Gayle was rubbing her hands against the fabric of her pants and grimacing. "So," she said as she started the car, "I've been meaning to talk to you."

Sandy cupped her hands around her mouth and blew into them, trying to warm them up. "About what?"

"The other night, when we were all out celebrating, Bah said something that kind of bothered me and I'm pretty sure you noticed when he said it. Do you remember that?"

"About not knowing where we'd be next year? I wasn't sure if I should ask you about that. What happened?"

Gayle nodded. "Right. Look, you can tell me to go to hell if this is none of my business, but you and Bah aren't an official _couple_ , right? He's not your _boyfriend_?"

"No, he's not," Sandy said, shaking her head.

"Right," Gayle said again. She glanced over at Sandy, frowning. "It just seemed like a pretty presumptuous thing for him to say, knowing that you two aren't even _together_. I hope he's not making you uncomfortable, saying stuff like that."

It hadn't really occurred to Sandy to delve this deeply into what was most likely just a throwaway comment from Bah. "What about it did you think would make me uncomfortable?"

There was a long pause. Gayle stared down at the steering wheel and shook her head. "This is none of my business," she said. "Of course it isn't. I'm such a bag. Just forget I brought it up, okay? I'm really sorry." She started to back out of the parking spot.

Sandy was starting to get annoyed. "Maybe you shouldn't have brought it up, but you did. I want to know what you think."

Gayle stopped the car halfway backed out of the spot. Then she sighed and pulled forward again. "Okay. Do you really want to know?"

"Yes." Sandy nodded. "I think so."

There was a long silence during which Gayle frowned at Sandy, trying to find the correct words. "There's a reason," she said slowly, carefully, "why after all this time, you guys aren't _together_ —you know, officially. And I don't think it has anything to do with Bah. Not that there's anything wrong with that," she added, as Sandy opened her mouth to speak. "I don't know your story, but I feel like I've gotten to know you pretty well since you've been around and I don't think you're the type of person who would purposely keep him at a distance just to, you know, keep him guessing or whatever dumb thing people do. You must have your reasons. We can leave it at that."

"Right," Sandy said.

"Right. And so, when he said what he said, it made me worry that you—" she hesitated and then cleared her throat. "I can't believe I'm saying this—but it made me worry that you didn't know that you have a choice."

Sandy blinked. "A choice in what?" She wasn't sure whether she should be touched that Gayle was thinking of her this protectively, or insulted because Gayle seemed to think she was a moron.

Gayle turned her body to face Sandy. "A choice in whether you want _this_ to be your life," she said, jerking a thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the arena. "Any of it. It's a choice, and you have to consciously make the decision every day to accept that it's what you want." She sighed again and rolled her eyes. "I'm not trying to be, like, theatrical or anything, but you need to know these things. Do you think about it? About what it would be like?"

Not seeing any point in lying about it, Sandy said, "I've been having trouble with it just recently—with knowing how much he'll be gone."

"Good," Gayle said, nodding. "Well—not _good_ , obviously—I just mean, that's a normal thing to think about. I've known girls who get into relationships with these guys and everybody ends up with their hearts broken because it's not what the girls thought it would be, and the guys assume that everyone is on board with what it's really like. He will be gone _a lot_ ," she said. "The bright side is that a normal team will have close to as many home games as games on the road, so it won't be as bad as this year has been. But it'll still be really hard. And if you go with Bah wherever he goes next year, you won't know anybody there. And maybe he'll get traded and end up somewhere else the year after that, and you won't know anybody _there_. Have you guys talked about that?"

"We've talked about where he might end up next year and the possibility of me coming with him," Sandy said, adding, because she felt dishonest not doing so, "once."

"Right, once." Gayle nodded again. "You guys have a _single_ conversation about you _maybe_ going with him next year, and all of the sudden he's allowed to just drop that into a conversation like it's a fact? _Especially_ since he nearly killed me with a look when we were talking about you coming to Lake Placid just a minute before that."

Sandy frowned. "Why? What was he worried you'd say?"

"I almost said that whether or not girlfriends came along depended on how serious the relationship was," Gayle said. She shrugged. "And, I mean, it's true. I just assumed that you would be there. Me and my dumb, big mouth."

"Bah hadn't mentioned it before," Sandy said. "He never makes a big deal out of anything. Do you really think he meant something by what he said?"

Gayle shrugged. "I can't tell you that. You're going to have to talk to him. I just feel like they're all so used to getting what they want that they forget that playing hockey is, at best, just a job, and at worst, a game that these grown men continue to play and prioritize over _everything_ else." Gayle was shaking her head and staring down at the floor of the car, apparently in disbelief that she was saying any of this.

"But—" Sandy paused, unsure how to phrase her question. "What about _you_?"

Gayle looked up. "Oh, I _love_ it." She laughed at the dumbfounded expression on Sandy's face. "I decided a long time ago that I wanted this life, and honestly, I don't regret it. I wouldn't trade it for anything. _Anything_." She jabbed at the car seat with her index finger with each syllable of the word.

Sandy didn't respond. She stared out the windshield of the car at the snow that had started to fall.

"But, speaking as someone who knows and cares about both of you and someone who, I guess, just loves sticking her nose into things," Gayle continued, and Sandy snorted in spite of herself, "I just wanted to tell you that you have every right to decide that it's not for you. I wouldn't blame you for that, and if Bah cares about you, he wouldn't either."

Sandy wasn't sure of the intended purpose of Gayle's comments. In the days following their conversation, she was plagued with doubts.

As far as she could tell, this comment that Bah had made was just an off-the-cuff remark from someone who had had a few beers. It was interesting, though, to consider Gayle's side of it. Maybe in the back of his mind, Bah saw it as a foregone conclusion that she would go with him wherever he ended up going in the fall. Maybe they hadn't had a second conversation about the subject of her coming with him because he assumed that Sandy had somehow agreed to terms.

On the other hand, Bah wasn't a deceptive person. He had never been, and he didn't need to be. If he really wanted Sandy to go with him, she was open to that possibility, but that was an enormous step. She thought there needed to be far more conversations before anything in that regard was decided, and this was saying something coming from Sandy, who was historically adverse to hard conversations.

That Friday morning, as Sandy was washing dishes in the kitchen, the phone rang. Will, who was in the front entrance after having cleared the front walk of some more snow and was in the middle of taking off his boots, called for her to answer it.

Sandy hurried to pick it up with still-wet hands. "Hello?"

"Hi, kiddo."

She nearly dropped the phone. "Ray?"


	20. Chapter 20

**Chapter 20 - January 18, 1980**

"Ray?" Sandy asked, although she didn't need to. It hadn't been nearly long enough for her to forget the sound of his voice.

"Yeah. How've you been?"

Will wandered into the kitchen with his eyebrows raised. "Did you just say 'Ray?'"

Sandy put a finger to her lips and nodded, frowning. "How did you get this number?"

Ray laughed a little. "Well, I started by calling Information and asking for Will Benton because I couldn't remember the name of the damn suburb that you guys live in. Turns out there's two of them, so I called the _other_ William Benton in the Minneapolis area and woke him up during his afternoon nap. So then I got yelled at by a stranger for a little while, and then I tried the other number. And here we are."

Sandy put her forehead in her hand. "Ray. Why are you calling?"

"Oh. Well. Because I'm in town."

At this, Sandy turned and stared at Will, as if he could also hear Ray. He gave her a wide-eyed, questioning look in response. "You're _what_?"

"I guess I'm not really in _town_ —I mean, I'm not in _Burnsville_ , if that's what you're worried about. I have meetings in St. Paul all this week. I thought maybe we could meet up while I'm here."

Will had walked over to Sandy while Ray talked, and she suddenly felt him trying to wrench the phone away from her. "No—wait, Will, don't," she said, slapping at his hands.

She heard Ray laughing again. "Tell him I said hi."

Sandy shoved Will away with one arm and took two steps back, stretching the phone cord across the room. As Will reached out to hang the phone up from the base, she threw a roll of paper towels at him. It hit him lightly in the head and rolled away into the living room. He gave her a dirty look and chased after it.

"Still there?" Ray asked.

"Yes," Sandy said. "Sorry. I just—I guess it's just weird to hear from you. It's been a while."

"Six months," he agreed. "Lots of catching up to do—do you think you might want to meet with me tonight for dinner? I've been locked up in this hotel room all day."

This felt distinctly worse than going out for coffee to Sandy, and so she said, "I'm seeing someone, you know."

Ray snorted. "I didn't know that. I'm happy for you, though. Doesn't change the fact that I think it'd be nice to see you while I'm here. Are you really that busy?"

"I'm not," she said. As she spoke, Will returned to the room, holding the unspooled paper towel roll and scowling. She moved to stand defensively near the phone base on the wall, and he rolled his eyes, dropped the roll on the counter, and disappeared down the hallway. Sandy sighed, and, against her better judgement, said, "okay. Let's have dinner."

They made plans to meet at the restaurant in Ray's hotel, downtown in St. Paul, and hung up. Sandy wandered down the hallway to Will and Jenny's bedroom, where she found Will standing and looking out the window with his arms crossed.

"You look very dramatic," she said.

He looked back over his shoulder at her. "I don't think you should go. I think it's a bad idea."

Sandy shrugged. "What do you think is going to happen? It's _Ray_. We know him."

"I know that, but don't you think it's odd? I mean, all of the sudden, hey, Ray's here! Doesn't that make you nervous?"

"Not as nervous as it makes you, apparently," Sandy said. "He travels for work all the time. It's not out of the ordinary."

"But did he ever come _here_? In all the time you were with him, did he ever come to Minnesota once?"

Sandy peered at Will. His hands were twitching. "How many cups of coffee have you had today?"

"Five," he said.

"It's not even noon. Is that good for your health, doctor?"

"Don't change the subject," Will said. "I'm right, and you know it. I'm _right_. You're doing so well, Sandy."

She frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Exactly what it sounds like. You had a lot to work through when you first got here, and I think you're moving in the right direction. Meeting up with him isn't going to help anyone."

Sandy had been on the fence about actually going through with meeting Ray, but as Will spoke she realized that it was the only thing she was interested in doing that night. "I'm going," she said. "It's not up to you—and it's not your job to monitor my _progress_. You're not—" she paused on the edge of saying "you're not Mom and Dad," but stopped just short, as this wasn't exactly applicable. "Nobody asked you to do that," she said instead.

Will shrugged. "Fine. Do whatever you want—I mean, you were going to anyway. I'm sorry I tried to help," he called after her as she left the room.

Sandy went back and forth on her decision to actually go all afternoon. What was the worst that could happen? It was _Ray_. He wasn't a sinister man. What could happen? She wondered this to herself over and over as she tried to pick clothes that were nice, but not _too_ nice and style her hair in a way that was pretty, but not _too_ pretty. She wanted, subconsciously, to be able to show Ray that she was doing well, without looking like she had tried. It was, admittedly, kind of a complicated look to pull off, but by the time she left the house, Sandy felt that she had achieved it, more or less. Not bad for someone who had re-decided to go a handful of times, she thought.

Even as she drove to St. Paul, Sandy kept in mind that she could decide to just turn around and go home. She had thought about calling Bah to tell him what was going on before leaving, but had decided against it. It wasn't exactly newsworthy. She was just going for dinner with someone. The fact that it happened to be Ray as just an additional detail. Besides, Bah had a game that night, and so she didn't want to cause him any unnecessary stress. Not that her meeting up with Ray should cause him any stress. It was just dinner, after all.

When she pulled into a parking spot a block away from the hotel, Sandy noticed that her hands were shaking and took a couple of deep breaths, trying to steady herself. She looked at her own eyes in the rear view mirror and said, in a quiet voice, "you can always leave. If you feel uncomfortable, you can always pretend you're going to the washroom and leave." Sandy continued to sternly reassure herself alone in the car for a few minutes before a man on the street peered at her curiously as he passed by. She stopped talking to herself and took some deep, calming breaths. After a few more minutes, her hands stopped shaking, and she was able to get out of the car and walk to the hotel.

Ray looked great, Sandy noted with a twinge of annoyance as she approached the table. He was looking down, reading the menu, and Sandy found herself walking carefully, trying to prolong the moment before he realized she was there.

Eventually he did look up, and a smile spread across his face. This put Sandy at ease a little, and she allowed herself to be pulled into a quick hug. "Wasn't sure you'd show up," Ray said, pulling her chair out for her. She'd forgotten that he always did that. "I mean, I only got here five minutes ago, but it seems like it was a lot longer."

"Oh, was I late?" Sandy checked her watch as she sat down. She was not late.

"I was early."

"Oh." An awkward silence fell. She took a sip of water, trying to prepare herself. "So, why are you in St. Paul?"

Ray shrugged. "A guy I worked with a few years ago moved out here and he's looking for someone to help with a job. You've probably heard or read about the stadium they're building downtown in Minneapolis?" He paused for her to nod. "Right. So, this guy works with the head engineering company working on that, and he's looking for people. I'm in doing interviews and meetings this week." He frowned at her for a moment before continuing. "And if it works out, I'll probably move here for a couple of years."

Sandy drained her glass of water and set it down on the table with a _thunk_. "You'd move _here_?"

"I guess so." Ray laughed. "That wouldn't be so bad, would it?"

"What about the house and—and everything?" Sandy felt her face growing warm.

He shrugged again. "I'd rent something for a while, I guess. And anyway, the house—well, I've actually been trying to sell it."

"Why?"

"Hasn't really felt like home lately," Ray said, tilting his head to the side. "And besides, I don't need all that room." The word "anymore" hung in the air between them, although Ray hadn't said it.

Sandy studied him from across the table and he held her gaze steadily for a moment before glancing away at the menu again. "So, you haven't been—? Not since—?" She struggled with the question, not sure that she wanted to know the answer.

He watched her wrestle with her words for a moment before shaking his head. "Nope. I mean, I've gone out a few times, but nothing worth mentioning. I'm thinking about getting a dog. I think maybe I'm too old to date."

"Jesus, Ray, you're not too old to date."

"Apparently you're seeing someone, though?" Ray's tone wasn't as confrontational as the question he was asking. He might have been asking about the weather. "What's the story there?"

A waitress came by and refilled Sandy's water. "It's—a little weird," Sandy said after a pause, and immediately felt terrible. She looked around, half-expecting Bah to be standing there, listening to their conversation, even though she knew he was in Texas.

"What do you mean?'"

"He's not my _boyfriend_ ," she said. "I've been seeing him since September but we're not—official, I guess. We basically are, we just haven't had that conversation. Yet."

Ray steepled his fingers and narrowed his eyes down at the table. "I can't tell if that's a good thing or not. If you've been seeing him for this long, why wouldn't you—?" He stopped talking abruptly, looked up at her, and smiled. "Oh. Yeah, I guess I get it."

Sandy smiled too, in spite of the feeling of guilt rising in her stomach. "He's a good guy. A great guy, actually. He's been patient, and he really doesn't have to be."

"Good," Ray said, not convincingly. "Great. So, what does he do? Does he work in the city? Go to college?"

"No." Sandy shook her head. "He's a hockey player."

Ray nodded. "Ah, yeah. I guess this _is_ Minnesota." He gestured around them with his hand, as if they could positively see the hockey in the air.

"Right. He plays for the Olympic team right now, actually."

Ray had been taking a sip from his glass as she spoke. He set it down and raised his eyebrows. "What? Really?" Sandy nodded and he let out a low whistle. "Well, good for him."

"Yeah," Sandy said. "Yeah, it is."

The waitress returned to take their orders and Sandy was granted a reprieve from what had felt like three hours of conversation.

Once they were alone again, Sandy felt determined to change the subject. "So, what've you been doing for the past six months?"

Ray shrugged. "This and that. Working. Lots of the kinds of stuff I was doing for your dad, but less regularly." He frowned. "I ran into him once, you know."

"What? My dad?" Sandy asked. "Where? When? _Why_?"

"Lots of questions," Ray laughed. "It was a while ago—probably in November. I was buying groceries and I saw him. He told me you were having the time of your life out here. He was—well, he was smug. But that's your dad in a nutshell."

"Seems about right," Sandy said, shaking her head. "I haven't talked to either of them since—well, since that last time. They came out here for a week in October and I stayed with a friend."

He gave her a sad little smile. "You don't think it'll ever be okay with them?"

"I don't think so. Not right now, at least."

Ray accepted this without comment. "Well, anyway, it's nice that you have people here who you can count on. This friend."

She nodded. "Di. She's the best. Will and Jenny have been great, too. They're having a baby, you know."

"Really? That's nice for them," Ray said. "You'll be an aunt—just like the old lady you always knew you were."

"I guess so," Sandy said, smiling. "But I'm not sure about what'll happen when the baby comes."

"Why's that?"

She wasn't sure why she was telling Ray any of this. It felt therapeutic since he knew her, but had no real interest in any of it. "I think I should move out and give them some space, but it sort of depends on what Bah does next year."

"Who?"

The waitress returned and set their plates down in front of them. Sandy smiled at her as she turned to walk away. "The guy. That's his name. Bah."

Ray picked up his fork. "That can't be his name."

She sighed, not feeling like explaining it to him. "Well, anyway, it depends on where he ends up playing. I might go with him."

Ray had ordered a steak; he hovered over it with his cutlery while he considered what Sandy had just said. After a moment he cut a piece of it off, stabbed it with his fork and then paused, glancing up at her. "That doesn't sound much like you."

She couldn't tell whether this was a comment meant to make her angry based on Ray's face, which he was keeping impassive while he chewed his bite of steak. "What do you mean?" she asked.

"Well," Ray said, cutting off more meat, "I guess I thought you wanted to be the one making decisions for yourself. That's was how I understood what happened, anyway. With us. This—" he gestured at her with his fork, "just seems like you're waiting for him to tell you what you should be doing. Is that what you want now?"

Sandy's hands were shaking again. She gripped the napkin in her lap and stared down at her food, trying to put together a coherent thought. "That's not what's happening at all," she finally said, willing herself to look up at him. He had a sympathetic expression on his face, and Sandy could tell that he genuinely felt bad for upsetting her. She suddenly wished she were at home.

He sat back in his chair, looking like he was trying to give her room to breathe. "Okay," he said, shaking his head. "I apologize. It's not my place to judge—I don't know this guy and I don't know about the two of you together. We don't have to talk about this if you don't want to. It's uncomfortable—I get it."

They ate the rest of their meal, making awkward small talk. A few times Sandy glanced up at Ray and caught him looking like he wanted to say something, but he didn't manage to actually get the words out.

When the waitress arrived with the cheque, Sandy noticed that it was for both of their meals together. "Can we split this?" she asked.

The waitress, seemingly practiced in the art of detecting bad dates, swiped the bill off of the table before Ray could take it and generously offer to pay for the whole thing. "Of course. Be back in one second."

Once she had gone, Ray frowned at her. "I can get it, you know. We can charge it to my room."

"I know. I don't think you should."

He stared at her for a moment and then asked, "can I ask you something? You don't have to tell me if it's—you know—private."

"Sure."

"Does this guy, this Bah—does he know about _everything_? With us?"

It took Sandy a moment to realize that he was talking about the baby. She sighed. "Yeah, I told him everything. Why?"

A peculiar, almost sad expression flickered across Ray's face. He opened his mouth to respond, but the waitress returned at that moment, holding their respective, separate bills.

Once they paid, Ray walked her out to the lobby of the hotel. "This was fun," he said, and then laughed, catching the look on Sandy's face. "Well, maybe not _too_ much fun. It was nice to see you, kiddo."

She took two backwards steps away from him, closer to the doors. "You ruined that for me, you know. 'Kiddo.' Bah called me that once and I just about lost my mind."

Ray laughed again. He seemed more at ease now that they weren't anchored to a single spot. "That doesn't sound like a nice story."

"It ended up being okay in the end," she said, smiling. She turned to walk out of the hotel and then, remembering, spun back around. "Why did you care whether or not I'd told Bah about everything back home?"

"Just curious," Ray said, shrugging. When she didn't look satisfied, he sighed. "I know you enough to know that it wouldn't be an easy story for you to tell. You wouldn't have said anything unless this guy was important."

She frowned at him, considering this, and he took the opportunity of her silence to ask her another question: "if I get this job—are you gonna be okay with me living here?"

"Oh," Sandy said, surprised by the question. She hadn't expected him to actually ask for her blessing, and so she replied, "I guess it wouldn't be _such_ a nightmare. It's a big city."

He grinned. "Now, that's a good attitude to have. I doubt I'm going to be hanging out around any hockey arenas, so you don't have to worry about running into me."

Sandy started walking back to her car, feeling fairly proud of herself. The dinner hadn't been _great_ by any definition—the two of them had sat not speaking for most of it—but she had braved the situation and come out the other end unscathed.

As she made her way back in the direction of her car, Sandy was suddenly struck by the prospect of living in the same city as Ray. Of potentially running into him unexpectedly. Of facing the idea of having him in her life again. She paused, her hand outstretched and reaching for the car door handle, slightly paralyzed by these thoughts. It was fine, Sandy thought, to have Ray living across the country from her, safely several hours of flights or several days of driving away. But it was another thing entirely to have him there, in the city in which she had made a home for the past six months.

It wasn't fair, Sandy thought. Of all the cities in all the states in the entire country, why did Ray think he could move into hers? Surely there was another city with a large-scale construction project that could use his expertise. He didn't _need_ to move to Minnesota. She didn't _want_ Ray there.

But she had told him otherwise.

Sandy ran back to the hotel, hoping but not expecting Ray to still be in the lobby. Then she paused near the elevator doors, weighing her options. She knew the number of the room Ray was staying in—he had said it when he charged his meal—but the thought of going up there twisted her stomach into knots. She hesitated for a moment longer, taking several steadying breaths before pushing the call button.

When the doors opened, she was surprised to see Ray standing there.

"Oh," she said.

"Hi," he said. "Just forgot my jacket in the restaurant—what's going on?"

Sandy let out the breath she had been holding. "I need to talk to you."

Ray stepped out the elevator, dodging the door as it started to close. "Okay. Let's go up and talk. One sec."

Once Ray had returned with his jacket, they went up in the elevator to his floor, not speaking as they did. He had an infuriating, self-satisfied expression on his face that told Sandy that Ray knew exactly why she had come back.

He held the door of his hotel room open for her and, when it was closed, leaned his back against it until he noticed the expression on Sandy's face. He walked past her to the window and pulled the curtains open. "What did you need to talk about?"

Sandy took a deep breath. "I don't want you to move here."

He made a noise that sounded like half a sigh, half a laugh. "I know you don't."

"I know what I want shouldn't matter to you anymore, and I'm sure I probably wouldn't even notice if you _did_ live here, but I had to tell you that."

Ray sat on the windowsill and frowned. "Can I ask why not? It's not as if—" he paused, glancing up at her for a moment before continuing, "not to be a whiner or anything, but it's not as if I _did_ anything to you, really."

Sandy started to get indignant before she took a moment to consider that Ray was, in fact, correct about this. It had been _her_ who had left out of the blue, _her_ who had blown up the relationship. "That's not the point," she said, taking a step closer to him. "The point is that you don't have to come _here_. Why would you want to come and live in the same city as someone who hurt you?"

"Because I'm an adult!" Ray burst out suddenly, startling Sandy. "Do you think I just decided to do this without thinking about it? Would I have come here if I had anywhere else to go?" He clenched his fists and rubbed them against his legs. "I haven't been working much since the summer. It's been slow. I'm trying to take anything I can, but I can't keep going like this. Believe me, the last thing that I _want_ is to move here and maybe run into you and this—this hockey playing-Olympian you're seeing now. And knowing my luck, I'd probably move in right next to the guy."

Sandy snorted in spite of herself. She sank down onto the bed and crossed her legs. "There really isn't any work?" she asked, deliberately choosing to ignore most of what he'd said.

He shook his head. "Not really. I had to let the guys I had working with me go in October. It's incredible to me that they think it's a good idea to build this thing here in this economy, but I'm not telling anybody that."

For a while, neither of them spoke. Sandy felt awful, but she had also lived with Ray for a long time, and she knew that he had a fair amount of money in savings. She suspected that his need to find work was maybe not as urgent as he was making it seem.

Ray was watching Sandy carefully. "You know, I really thought you'd come back. That day when you left, I mean. I waited outside pretty well all day."

"You did?" She looked over at him, and he nodded. "Why?"

"I don't know." He shrugged. "I guess I didn't give you credit for being as brave as you are. And you've been able to make a go of it out here. It's good, you know? I'm happy for you. Really."

"Thanks."

They were quiet for another long moment, both staring blankly at the carpet and trying to formulate something to say. Finally, Ray cleared his throat. "Can I just say something to you while I have you here?"

Sandy looked up. "All right."

He rubbed his face with both hands, in a gesture that was oddly reminiscent of Bah, and then exhaled loudly. "I spent a long time trying to understand you when we were together. And I couldn't do it, but I'd like to think I got to know you pretty well anyway. At first I thought it was just because you're younger than me, but after you left it and I had a long time to sit around and think about it, I sort of dawned on me that you have no idea how to be happy. You go along with what other people think you _should_ do until you realize it's not what you want, and then you pull away and wind up hurting people. I think that's what happened with me."

"Oh." Sandy wasn't quite sure how to take this.

"That might not be what you want to hear, but—" he shrugged. "Just something to consider with this new guy. Maybe think about whether it's what you want, or if it's something you're telling yourself you _should_ want, before you let it go too long and the poor guy falls in love with you. Just think about where you see yourself in five years, you know? If it's with him, then fine. But the girl who left me for mentioning marriage at the wrong moment would never wait on a guy to plan her next move."

Sandy took a moment while she tried to figure out whether she was offended by this assessment of her character before deciding that he was, again, probably right. "You know I didn't want to hurt you, don't you?" she asked.

Ray nodded. "I do. That's made it a little easier—knowing that you're sorry." He tilted his head to the side and frowned. "It wasn't my intention to make you feel like I was deciding things for you. I wish I'd just told you that."

"It wasn't your fault. I think the baby stuff scared me so bad I would have tried to leave no matter what." She caught the look on his face when he glanced up at her. "I mean, since we're telling the truth…"

He let out a sad laugh. "You're entitled to that, I guess."

"I guess." Sandy got to her feet and started to move towards the door. "I'd better go."

Ray nodded and stood, too. "All right. Be good, okay?"

"I will. You too. Can you promise me something?"

"Sure."

"If you _do_ end up moving here, please don't tell me. I'm sure it's better if I just don't know."

He grinned. "You got it."

Ray never did contact Sandy again, but she found out much later that he did move to Minnesota, apparently to work on the Metrodome. While waiting for a flight in Minneapolis in 1986, Sandy bought a newspaper and found a wedding announcement that featured a photograph of Ray and his brunette bride to be.

In 1980, though, Sandy departed from her final meeting with Ray feeling more confused than ever.


	21. Chapter 21

**BlurredHorizon** \- I appreciate the kind words, friend! You're great!

* * *

 **Chapter 21 - January 19 - 20, 1980**

"I still can't believe you went. What if he killed you?"

Sandy raised her face up off of the pillow that she had been burying it into to frown at Di. "What's the matter with everyone? I _lived_ with Ray for over a year." The two of them were stowed away in Sandy's room, not wanting to listen to Will as he tried to teach Jenny breathing exercises in the living room.

"Yeah, what if but maybe he didn't _want_ to when you guys were—you know, that part doesn't really matter," Di interrupted herself as Sandy dropped her face back into the pillow and groaned. "The point is, I'm not sure what you were expecting when you went. What did you think would happen?"

"I don't know," Sandy said, muffled by the pillow. She turned her head to the side and continued, "I guess I wanted to see how he was doing. Maybe that was stupid. I don't know what I wanted to see. I don't think he did, either."

"... which generally makes for a pretty great dinner date. Look, you invited me over to hear what I thought of all this," Di said, shrugging as Sandy grimaced at her. "Did you tell Bah?"

Sandy shook her head. "Not yet," she said, "but—"

"Oh my _Christ_." Di cut her off, rolling off the bed and onto the floor with a _thud_. Sandy peered over the edge of the bed at her friend, who was lying on her back with her hands over her face.

"What?"

Di dropped her hands to the floor. "Try to explain to me why you haven't talked to him about this. Please. Try."

Sandy sat up and considered it. "Well," she said, "it's just hard to give him bad news right now. He's out on the road, and they're not going to be back until tomorrow—"

"It isn't really bad news, though, is it? You just met up with Ray for dinner and he was kind of a cock to you. Other than that, what's the bad news?"

"If I talk to him about seeing Ray, I think the conversation about _us_ —Bah and I—will just sort of naturally come from that," Sandy explained. "And I'm worried about having to explain how I've been feeling to him. _Especially_ since I've waited so long to tell him. I just let things pile up."

Di reached out a hand for Sandy to grab and pulled herself into a sitting position. "Okay, so, _how_ exactly are you feeling?"

Sandy wrinkled her nose. "I feel—I feel terrible again. I feel guilty. Like this has all been one big secret I've been keeping from Bah and the longer I wait to say something, the worse it gets."

"Sure," Di said, drawing her legs up underneath her. "And you're definitely right. But you know what? The reason why you feel so guilty is because you know you should be talking to him about it, but you're not. It's just gonna keep eating at you until you suck it up and have the conversation."

Di was, of course, correct. Sandy didn't see it as much of a credit to her character when she admitted this to herself.

Telling Bah that she had seen Ray was not what concerned Sandy. Really, all that boiled down to was that she probably shouldn't have gone at all. Not because she wasn't _allowed_ to see Ray, but she recognized that seeing him had only confused her. She also knew, however, that if she was telling Bah about having seen Ray, there was no reason not to come clean about the rest of the issues that had been weighing on her—that she was feeling doubtful, and about her conversation with Gayle that had left her feeling like Bah had deceived her. The obvious solution to these problems was, and always had been, to just talk to him about it. She had just avoided doing so for months, under the pretence of waiting for the right moment.

Sandy had made plans to pick Bah up at the arena when he got home the following evening. She didn't know whether this was a good thing or not, but she spent the rest of the day steeling herself.

Bah was waiting for her on the sidewalk when she pulled up to the rink. "Hi," he said, tossing his bag into the back seat as he climbed inside. "Pav said not to wait—a bunch of guys are going to get something to eat."

Sandy, who had forgotten all about Pav and how she would have normally driven him back to the apartment as well, said, "oh, didn't you want to go with them?" She grimaced, annoyed at herself for immediately trying to torpedo their conversation.

But Bah shook his head. "No, not really. I just feel like going home and relaxing with you for a while." He grinned. "Why, did _you_ want to go out with the boys?"

" _No_ ," she said quickly, and he laughed. "I actually—" Sandy paused and took a deep breath before continuing, "I actually really need to talk to you about a few things."

She could see him studying her face out of the corner of her eye as she drove. "Sure," he said. "Is everything all right?"

She shook her head and then, thinking that this was maybe a little melodramatic, said, "I'm not sure." Sandy took another deep breath, slowing the car to stop for a red light. "While you were gone, Ray called. He was in St. Paul for work and we went out for dinner. Him and I. Me and Ray."

Bah didn't respond until long after the light had turned green and Sandy had started driving again. "Well," he said eventually, "how did it go?"

She wasn't sure what reaction she had been expecting. "Oh—it was fine, I guess. He seemed kind of sad, but other than that I think he just wanted to see how I was doing. We just talked. He said—well, he _did_ say that he might have to move here for work."

He surprised her by clapping a hand over his eyes and snorting with laughter. "Of _course_ he said that," he said. Bah took his hand away from his face and grinned over at her. "Sorry, it's just—he shows up after all this time and he suddenly _has_ to move _here_ for work? Is he for real?"

"I don't know," she said. "It seems odd."

Bah laughed again. "For _sure_ it does."

Sandy drove in silence for a while, trying to decide how she felt about how Bah had processed this news. She hadn't wanted him to be upset, but the fact that he was so understanding made her feel less sure about the rest of what she needed to tell him. Maybe it wasn't such a big deal after all. "So, you're not mad?"

"Well, no," Bah said. "What do I have to be mad about? Should I be worried about him? I mean, now that he's apparently moving here?"

"No."

He shrugged. "Then why would I be angry that you saw him? You don't feel the same way about him as you did before, and we're—you know—together, in whatever way that we are—"

Seeing an opportunity, Sandy cut him off. "I want to talk about _that_ , too."

"About what?"

Sandy pulled the car into a parking spot outside of Bah's apartment complex and cut the ignition. "About this," she said, gesturing at the two of them. "About us."

Bah nodded, looking almost excited at the prospect, and reached into the back seat for his bag. "Of course. Why don't we talk inside?"

Bah's tone made Sandy worry that he had more optimistic feelings about this conversation than she did, but she followed him up the stairs and into the building. Once they were inside and seated at the kitchen table, Bah held an open hand out to Sandy. "Go ahead."

There was a long pause before Sandy spoke. Finally, she took a deep breath and said, "what do you think we're doing in the fall?"

"Oh," Bah said. He seemed surprised at the question. "Well, I don't really know. We haven't talked about it all that much. Why, what do _you_ think we're doing in the fall?"

"God." Sandy immediately felt ridiculous. Of _course_ Bah hadn't assumed that she'd go with him wherever he went. The idea of it suddenly seemed outrageous to her. She put her forehead in her hands. "Oh, God. I'm really sorry, Bah."

"What? Why?"

"I'm just being an idiot," she said in the direction of the table. "Gayle said something to me that really messed—"

"What did she say?" Bah's tone was a little sharper; Sandy lifted her head at the sound of it.

"She thought—do you remember when we were all out for drinks on the night when you found out you made the team?" She paused for Bah to nod before continuing, "do you remember saying something about not knowing where the two of us would be next year?"

Bah frowned. "No. When did I say that?"

Sandy felt her stomach drop about a foot further. Bah's reaction made it perfectly clear that she had nothing to worry about, and that she never had. She put her head back into her hands and groaned. "I'm sorry, Bah. This is so stupid."

"Well, no, it's not," Bah said, and she heard him lean back in his chair. "This was obviously bothering you—you were worried enough to at least have a conversation with Gayle about it."

"She talked to _me_ about it," Sandy said, looking up. "I wasn't worried until she mentioned it."

"And then what, you decided she _must_ be right and that I _must_ be trying to control you?" Bah crossed his arms. "That's what the issue is, right? That me saying this thing meant that I was just going to _force_ you to come with me without actually talking to you about it? How was _that_ going to work?"

Hearing him say it out loud caused Sandy's cheeks to suddenly become warm. "Not—not _exactly_ that," she said. He held a hand out across the table and she took it, her own hand creeping towards his, uncertain.

He squeezed gently. "The idea that I could force you to do anything that you didn't one-hundred percent want to do," he said, "is ridiculous to me. And I mean that in the most positive way."

Sandy looked up and grimaced. "I know. I'm sorry."

Bah had an odd look on his face as he shrugged, and then shrugged again, as if trying to repeat the motion in an attempt to get it right. He looked across the table at her for a long moment and then, abruptly, he let go of her hand, got to his feet, and walked back into the kitchen. "Are you hungry?"

She shook her head. "Not really."

"I am," he said. Bah opened the fridge and pulled out a whole pork chop. He stood there, leaning against the wall, and gnawed on it.

"How long has that been in there?" Sandy asked. The boys had just gotten back from a week-long trip to Oklahoma and Texas. Nobody had been there to cook in days.

Bah swallowed the bite he had been chewing with some difficulty. "A while." He continued to stand there, still watching her. His ears had turned red.

She stared back, unsure of how to track this change in mood. "Are you—"

He turned away from her suddenly and braced his hands on the kitchen counter. "I've been trying to be, you know, supportive, and good to you and all that stuff. You know?"

"I know," Sandy said. "You are. You have been."

" _I_ think I have been," he said, starting to speak more quickly. "And I'll tell you something—it _bothers_ me that you didn't think you could talk to me about this before today. You know, it's been weeks since that night. You've been stewing about this since then and you just didn't say anything. Why not?"

Sandy opened her mouth and closed it. "I don't know," she said. "It just hasn't felt like the right time to bring it up."

"Sure. Fine. Sure. But what _is_ the right time, really? If you're worried about something, I'd rather you just said it than waiting until you can't stand it anymore." He started walking back towards the table. "This doesn't work if we don't talk."

"I know." Sandy looked down at the table. "And I know I should have talked to you about all of this stuff, but—"

Bah paused, halfway through the motion of sitting back down. "Wait, hold on," he said. "What do you mean, ' _all_ of this stuff?' What else is there? Is there more that you haven't mentioned?"

There was a long moment of silence while Sandy and Bah stared at each other. Sandy felt trapped. She also understood that she had set that trap for herself and that she didn't have to look far, really, when it came to finding someone to blame for what happened next. Nevertheless, her voice still shook when she finally said, "do you really want to find out about it this way?"

Bah scoffed. "Well, better to find out like this than not find out at all and think everything is fine, I guess." He sighed. "Please," he said, "just be honest. Just be completely honest with me and we can figure it out. Whatever it is, let's just talk about it. Just tell me—I won't interrupt."

Another moment passed while Sandy worked up the nerve to do what she had, unfortunately, never really done with Bah: be absolutely transparent. She realized in that moment that it had been a lot easier to be the girl who had met Bah at the end of the summer—the girl who had just moved to town and had a secret that she didn't want to talk about. She had gotten used to having that level of accepted secrecy and never moved away from it. And that wasn't fair to Bah, she thought. It wasn't really fair to herself, either.

"Okay," she said. "I've been thinking a lot since I saw Ray. Our conversation made me question things."

Bah, unable to avoid breaking his rule about not interrupting, looked up. "Question what? Me? What did he say?"

"He said a lot, but the thing that stuck with me was him saying that he didn't think it was like me to wait for someone else to decide what I'm doing next. He told me to think about where I wanted to be in five years." Sandy paused, glanced up at Bah, and then immediately looked back down at the table when she saw the expression on his face. "And—I don't know, it made me realize that maybe I haven't thought at all about the future. The long term future, I mean. Part of that comes from not feeling like I've had enough time with you. And I know that's not your fault," she said, when he opened his mouth to interject. "I get that you're here for hockey. But how could you expect me to be all right going with you in the fall when I haven't spent a whole week with you in the entire time we've been seeing each other? I've been driving myself _nuts_ since probably November because I don't feel like it's been _long_ enough, and the one time I tried to bring it up, it didn't seem like it was a big deal to you."

Bah had put his face into his hands. He breathed heavily into them and then looked up again. "If you'd have _said_ it was a big deal, I would have known. If it mattered this much, you should have brought it up every chance you got. And _I_ never said I expected you to come with me in the fall. You've felt this way since November?"

Sandy swallowed hard and continued speaking. "I don't know. I guess so. I hung that calendar up in my room and every time I look at it I just feel sick. I don't know what to do. And Gayle said—" she paused as Bah let out a deep sigh. "Gayle really scared me, too. She made it seem like I needed to decide what I wanted to do and stick with it for the rest of my life and I don't think I'm ready to do that."

She stopped talking again, this time because Bah's head bobbed up and he was looking at her directly, clearly about to speak. It took him a long moment to cobble together a thought, but when he did, his voice wavered a little. "I don't understand why you couldn't have just talked to me about this. You talked to everybody _but_ me—Gayle, probably Di, even your _ex_ —can you tell me why?"

It occurred to Sandy that she didn't know why she had gone out of her way to keep things from Bah. She had self-sabotaged, maybe subconsciously, maybe not, for months, against the advice of others who almost certainly knew better and had her best interests at heart. She shook her head.

Bah sighed. "Was that everything you had to say, at least?"

"No," Sandy said, slowly shaking her head again. "There was one other thing."

"Oh, great," he said.

"Do you remember when we talked about what would have happened if you _didn't_ make the team? Just before the last cuts?" She paused for Bah to nod before continuing, "you said you might have stayed here until September. And I thought—"

Bah put a hand up. "Wait," he said.

But Sandy had started and was worried that if she didn't get this off her chest at that moment, she might never be in a position to do so again. "I felt like I didn't know if I even wanted you to _make_ this team because that would have meant that you got to stay here and we would have had more time to figure this out without having to go through this until the summer," she said. "I just wanted us to have more time, you know? And I felt awful for feeling that way because it's the complete opposite of what you want. I didn't know how to tell you. I didn't know how to tell you any of this."

While Sandy spoke, Bah had put both hands over his face again, and once she had fallen silent he let out a low, muffled groan into them. "Well," he said, raising his head to look over at her. "I guess I can understand why you didn't want to tell me _that_."

The apartment door suddenly opened and Mark Pavelich came in, hauling his luggage through. "Oh, hi," he said, noticing them at the kitchen table.

"Hey, Pav," Bah said, looking over his shoulder at his roommate. He sounded so incredibly tired. "Do you think you could give us the room, buddy? We're right in the middle of something."

A look passed between the two men, and Mark straightened up. "Of course," he said, and hustled back into the bedroom, accidentally whacking his suitcase on the wall on his way down the hallway.

Once he had gone, Bah sat with his hands folded in front of him, not speaking, for a long time. Sandy watched him, a sinking feeling in her stomach, not daring to break the silence.

Finally, he looked up. "Well, what do you figure we should do now?"

"I don't know," Sandy said.

He gave her a pained look. "I mean, what would you do? If you were in my position, how would you move forward? How do I plan a future with you in it, knowing what you've just told me?"

There didn't seem to be any one correct answer to this question, and so Sandy didn't offer one.

"Let's start with this," Bah said. "Do you even want to be with me? I guess that's my fault for not checking in and seeing where you were at with that."

"I do," Sandy said, "it's just—I don't know what to do now. I feel like it's kind of up to you."

"Oh, it definitely is," he replied. "I'm just, you know, trying to get a dialogue going here. But it's hard to trust you now. No—it's impossible for me to trust you now. I don't trust you. Is this going to be how it goes for us? You'll keep trying to find reasons to leave and I'll keep trying to make you stay? I don't understand why I have to be the only one fighting."

Sandy looked down. "I know. I'm sorry."

"I know you are." He also looked down, at his own hands clenched together on the table.

Sandy searched for something, _anything_ to say to make the situation better. She knew, though, that the solution could be found months prior to that moment, when she first felt anxious about the time she had left with Bah. Weeks prior, after her conversation with Gayle. At that particular moment, sitting and looking at the hurt and disappointed look on Bah's face, Sandy knew that there was nothing she could do.

"I think—you know, I think maybe you'd better just go," Bah said after another long stretch of silence. He looked up from his hands and nodded. "That's probably for the best."

Sandy obediently started to push her chair out from the table and paused. "Is this—are we—I mean, am I leaving for good?"

Bah scoffed. "I don't know. I just—I'm exhausted, Sandy. It shouldn't be this hard. It just shouldn't be. I mean, I'm going to the goddamn Olympic Games in a few weeks. That should be the most stressful thing in my life right now, but it's not, and I can't do this anymore. I have no idea how I'm supposed to love you. You make it really hard. Yeah," he added, as Sandy twitched a little at the word "love." He gave her a sad smile. "Surprise."

With leaden legs, Sandy made her way out of Bah's apartment. When she walked out the front door of the building, she saw that it had started to snow again.

"Minnesota," she said, to no one in particular.

Hardly noticing the cold, Sandy sank down onto the front steps of the building. She put her face into her hands and took a deep breath.

She sat there for an indeterminate amount of time, allowing a fair pile of snow to accumulate on her back. When the door opened and Bah came out, she wasn't startled. It wasn't really a surprise. He brushed the snow off and sat down heavily next to her.

"You gotta go home, Sandy. You're gonna freeze out here."

"I know," Sandy said, but she didn't move. Neither did he.

He propped his elbows on his knees and rested his chin in his palm. "For what it's worth, I don't regret getting to know you. Maybe that's just me being sentimental, but I'm grateful for it."

"I wasted so much of your time," she said into her hands.

Bah snorted. "Well, I mean, I made the team in the end anyway. You couldn't have done _that_ much damage." In a somewhat softer voice, he continued, "it wasn't a waste of time. Please don't think that."

Sandy turned her head to the side, peering over at him. "Thanks. For saying that you—you know."

"I wasn't just saying it. I _do_ love you—and I think you feel the same way, honestly, which is why this is pretty terrible. And also—just know that I didn't mean that you're hard to love. You're pretty easy to love, actually. That's the problem, I think."

"I'm so sorry, Bah."

"Yeah."

Sandy recalled, just over six months ago, having a similar conversation with Ray that ended in the same manner. She got to her feet. "I should go."

He looked up at her and she noticed suddenly that there was a mug sitting next to him on the step. He saw her looking and picked it up. "Okay. This is for you."

She accepted the mug and turned it over in her hands. It was bright red with "DALLAS, TEXAS" printed on it, along with a picture of a cowboy's somber face. "Thank you," she said, not quite knowing what to say.

"You're welcome," he said. "I figured you'd want to have it. They sell some really ugly stuff down there. Can't imagine why anyone would ever want that for real."

"Well, thanks," she said again, and started to back away from him. "See you."

"Yeah. Maybe I'll see you around some time." It didn't sound like a statement that held much hope.

"Maybe. Good luck in Lake Placid. I'm sure you guys will do great."

Bah smiled thinly at her. "Sure. Keep an eye out for me on TV, okay?"

They looked at each other for a long moment. Maybe this is how things will always end, Sandy thought. Maybe this is just how it works for me. Eventually she turned to go, walking back towards her car. Maybe I'm only capable of disappointing people.

It was a truly negative thought, but as Sandy started her car and drove away, leaving Bah sitting on the front step, she found it hard to think of evidence to the contrary.


	22. Chapter 22

**BlurredHorizon -** Thanks for reviewing as always! Hopefully your heart doesn't need to be broken for too long. :)

* * *

 **February 7 - 15, 1980**

Di was holding up a three foot-tall stuffed bear, with a pink bow around its neck and a heart in its hands. "Do you think he'd think this is cute?"

Sandy looked up from the spot on the floor that she was staring at. "Maybe if it was a little bit smaller."

"I don't know how much I trust your judgement on romantic gifts right now, but fine," Di said, putting the bear back on the shelf. "How about this?" She pointed to a bright red, heart-shaped picture frame. "He could keep it on his desk. I could put a picture of my face in it so I can watch him study all the time." Di looked expectantly at Sandy, who managed to crack a half-smile.

It had been a few days since Bah and the hockey team had left for New York, and about two weeks since Sandy had last spoken to Bah, and she had been consistently miserable for the entire time. She had underestimated the amount of contact that she had actually _had_ with Bah—whether it was talking on the phone while he was on the road or spending time together in person while he was at home, Bah had occupied a considerable amount of her time during the preceding six months. As a result, since the two of them had stopped speaking, Sandy found herself with more time on her hands. She was finding that having a wealth of time to sit around and take inventory of all the things she had done wrong was not the most productive thing.

It didn't help that it was the week leading up to Valentine's Day, when everything seemed to be skewed toward the romantic. Sandy didn't feel romantic, but Di did, and so Sandy had agreed to go shopping with her for a present for Peter under the condition that she would "keep it together."

"You should get him something practical," she told Di, turning away from the brightly-coloured Valentine's Day merchandise and attempting to shepherd her friend towards the everyday homewares. "He's a practical man. He doesn't seem like the type to be excited about getting anything shaped like a heart."

Di didn't look convinced. "What are we thinking, like, a new floor lamp or something?"

"Well, I don't know. Does he _need_ a new floor lamp?"

"Don't take this the wrong way, Sandy, but I'm probably just going to get him what _I_ want to get him. I don't think you're in the right frame of mind for this."

Sandy had to admit that Di had a point. "I think we can both agree that I'm keeping it together, though."

"I'm impressed," Di said. "That was _almost_ a joke." She turned away and looked around the store. "Well, what about something like a watch? For Peter. There aren't many gifts more practical than a watch."

"Like this one?" Sandy pointed at a display of red, plastic heart-shaped watches nearby. "So practical," she said, and Di giggled.

In the end they picked out a plain but classy-looking watch with a brown leather strap and a white face. While Di paid, Sandy studied a newspaper that the cashier had left open to the sports section on the counter, trying to look nonchalant.

"They haven't played yet," Di said, making Sandy jump like she had been caught doing something wrong. "Their first game is against Sweden next Tuesday. I'm sure if they win at all, we'll hear about it."

"You mean the hockey team?" the cashier, an elderly man in a sweater vest, asked. "You know, a bunch of players on that team are from here. Herb Brooks, their coach, he comes from St. Paul, you know."

"Oh, we _know_ ," Di said, firmly handing the money over. "Don't worry, sir."

When Di pulled up to Sandy's house later to drop her off, she hesitated and then put the car in park. "Hang on a sec," she said, as Sandy started to open the door to get out.

"What's up?"

"I was gonna wait to ask you this until, you know, maybe next week or something," Di said. "Because I feel like the timing of it is a little funny."

"The timing of what?"

"Well, I've been looking at apartments," she said. "I think it's probably time for me to move out of my parents' place, but I don't think I have the courage to move in with my sister, and I'm not trying to scare Peter away by asking _him_ at this stage with us, and so—" Di glanced over at Sandy. "Do you think you'd want to look for a place?"

Sandy frowned. "A place to live? You want to move in with me?"

Di gave Sandy an impatient look. "Yes, a place to live. Yes, I want to move in with you. You said you want to get out of your brother's house before Jenny has that baby, right? Why don't we just find somewhere together?"

The idea hadn't even occurred to Sandy. She'd assumed that Di would want to move in with Peter if she was moving out of her parents' house, and she herself hadn't revisited the idea of finding her own place since casually perusing the "For Rent" section of the paper and nearly giving herself a heart attack when she realized just how expensive apartments could be on a single, grocery store employee income. "I think that would be a great idea," she said. "Why didn't you want to ask me now?"

"Something about asking your friend to move in with you on Valentines Day," Di said. "It just seemed a little weird. I also know you're going through a rough time right now and I didn't want your emotional state to make the decision for you."

Sandy laughed. "Well, more than anything it would be my financial state making the decision. I'll start checking in the paper again for places."

As Sandy again reached to open the car door, Di touched her on the shoulder. "Wait," she said. "You're not alone, you know. I mean, _alone_ alone. I know you probably feel that way right now, but—you know, you've got me. You're always going to have me."

Genuinely touched, Sandy smiled. "Thanks, Di."

When Sandy walked through the front door of the house, she saw Jenny lying on her back on the floor of the living room. She hurried to get her jacket and shoes off. "Are you okay?"

"Yes," Jenny said. "I'm glad someone came home—I came back here to grab something over my lunch break, and I dropped my mittens on the floor. So when I tried to pick them up I just—"

"Tipped," Sandy finished for her, moving to help Jenny up. "You really can't get up without help?"

"Well, I mean, I could do just about anything if I really needed to," Jenny said, getting to her feet. "It was nice to just lay down and rest for a while. Thanks for your help, though. How did shopping go?"

Sandy shrugged. "Di was just looking for something for Peter for Valentine's."

"And she asked you to go along?" Jenny wrinkled her nose. "That seems a little insensitive, considering."

"It was okay," Sandy said, sinking down on the couch. "I think she just wanted me to get out of the house and do something. And that's probably a good thing—it's better than moping around here." She paused, frowning. "She mentioned the idea of us looking for an apartment together."

Sandy had talked to Jenny about her search for a place when it was in its earliest stages. "That might be a good idea," Jenny said. She sat down on the couch next to Sandy, lifting her legs up one at a time and placing them on the coffee table. "A little more affordable, maybe. But—you know you don't have to leave here once the baby shows up, right?"

"I know. I just feel like I'd be butting into your _family_ if I was here."

Jenny snorted and shook her head. "You _are_ our family. Of course you are. You could stay here forever if you wanted."

Sandy grinned. "So you're just having the one kid? You'll never need that other bedroom?"

"Ah, well," Jenny said with a wave of her hand, "the second bedroom is big enough. We can just squeeze all the other ones we have in there." The two girls laughed, and Jenny reached over and squeezed Sandy's wrist. "Really, though—we wouldn't have said you could move in here in the first place if we weren't prepared to have you here for a while. And, well, Will didn't know about the baby then, but I did. It's been—whoa. Are you okay?"

Sandy hadn't cried much in the wake of what had happened with Bah—she didn't feel like she was entitled to it. The one moment of weakness she'd indulged had been while sitting in the car in the grocery store parking lot, when "It Ain't Me Babe" by Bob Dylan had been playing on the radio. Sandy had rested her head against the steering wheel and sobbed for a while, before wiping her eyes and pulling herself together enough to go in to work.

Another thing Sandy did not feel entitled to was having a support system that was quite so supportive. "Everybody's being so nice," she said, wiping the tears away from her eyes. "I don't know what I did to deserve you guys."

A few nights later, Sandy sat up at the kitchen table, a newspaper open to the classified section, circling two-bedroom apartments with a blue crayon from a box that Jenny had left sitting on the table. Jenny and Will had long since gone to bed, and Sandy was thinking of turning in too when the phone started to ring.

She looked up, startled, before hurrying to grab it before it woke the whole house up. "Hello?"

The person on the other end did not speak. Sandy could hear, faintly, the sounds of people talking softly in the background as if they, too, were trying to not wake other people up.

"Hello?" Sandy said again, adding, "Benton residence?" just in case this person was unsure they had the right number.

"Did you watch the game in New York?" Just as Sandy was starting to find the phone call creepy and was about to hang up, she heard Bah's voice. "Did you see us play the Soviets?"

Sandy hadn't watched the game against the Soviets on television the night before. She had been working, but Will had filled her in on the drubbing the boys had gotten the next morning as he solemnly munched on a piece of toast.

"I'm no sports analyst, but _that_ can't have been a good sign."

Sandy wasn't a sports analyst either, but she had to agree.

"I missed it," she told Bah.

He chuckled softly. "Probably a good thing."

Sandy cradled the receiver against her cheek and hopped up onto the kitchen counter. "How do you feel now? About how you'll do?" she asked, opting to get him talking about hockey to keep him talking while she had him on the phone.

"Not great," he said. The voices in the background grew slightly louder and then faded away, seeming to leave Bah alone. Sandy glanced over at the clock, trying to figure out what time it was in New York. "I don't know what I'm doing here. What am I doing here?"

She wondered if he had been drinking. "Well, _I_ don't know," she said. "Did you expect to win that game?"

"I mean, no, not really. I'm—" he paused suddenly. "You know, I actually called you for a reason. You just caught me feeling all sorry for myself. I was calling to warn you about something before next week."

Sandy sat up straighter. "What's happening next week?"

"Well, it'll be Valentine's Day."

"Oh."

"Yeah. I ordered flowers for you. Then I lost the receipt, so now I can't cancel the order because they need something from it so they know it's the guy who bought them and not, you know, someone who just wants to ruin your day. They take that pretty seriously, apparently."

"Oh," Sandy said again. "Well, I appreciate the warning."

"Thought you would. I guess just enjoy the flowers. I forgot about it until everybody here started talking about what they were getting their wives and stuff. Sorry for how stupid what I wrote in the card sounds in context." She heard the door of the room he was in open and close, followed by the sounds of him murmuring something to someone else. "Do you think you'll watch some of our games?" he asked her.

"Sure," Sandy said. "Tuesday against Sweden, right?"

"Right," he said, sounding a little surprised, and Sandy was thankful for Di for having mentioned it. "We play before we even do the opening ceremony. I thought that was kind of strange."

In the background Sandy heard someone suddenly shout something in a language she didn't understand. "Where are you?" she asked.

"Oh, I'm over at the athletes village," he said. "There isn't enough room for us in the main building here so they have us staying in a couple of trailers and there's no phone—I feel like we're all at summer camp."

"Well, it's only a couple of weeks," Sandy said, not quite sure how to respond. " _And_ it's the Olympics."

"Yeah, I guess it is," he said. "So, how have you been?"

Sandy sighed. "Bad."

He surprised her by laughing. "Will I seem insensitive if I say I'm glad to hear that?"

"I guess not."

Bah didn't speak for a long moment. "What do you think would have made things different?" he finally asked, as Sandy was starting to think that the call had been disconnected. "With us? What could I have done? Anything?"

Sandy had given this a considerable amount of thought in the days since Bah had left. "It honestly wasn't anything you did. And I know that's a thing that people say, but—really—you did everything you were supposed to do. It was just an issue with me. I'm not—"

"I mean, would it have helped if there'd been more time? You know, if I was just a guy you met who worked in the city and could drive out to see you every night?"

"But that's _not_ who you are," she said. "That's the thing. You aren't just a guy who works in the city, and there's nothing wrong with that. I _do_ think I would have felt better if I spent more time with you, but that's never how things were with us. I never really—I don't know—got my claws into you like that."

"Well, I wouldn't have minded that," Bah said, and they both laughed a little. "I just feel like, you know, what am I supposed to do now? If I'd known that it was ending that day I would have tried harder."

Sandy leaned her head back against the cabinets and sighed. "I don't know what to say to that."

"Yeah."

They were quiet for a while, Sandy listening to the sounds of people talking distantly in the background and trying to picture the room in which Bah was sitting.

Finally, Bah cleared his throat and said, "I miss you, you know? I don't know if that makes you uncomfortable or whatever, but I wish like hell that I could call you and just talk like before. I know you feel like we didn't spend a lot of time together, but for me, we _were_ , even if I was calling you from the road or something. Just talking to you was enough. And now it's just—"

"Gone," Sandy finished for him. "I know."

"It's making me feel crazy," he said. "Are you getting any of that, or is it just me?"

"It's not just you."

She heard him exhale sharply. "Then what are we _doing_ here?" he asked. "What's the point of this?"

Sandy was about to attempt to reply when Will came wandering into the kitchen, rubbing the back of his head and yawning. "Are you talking to yourself out here?"

She shushed him. "It's Bah," she said.

"Oh, well. Tell him I said hi."

"Did you hear that?" Sandy said into the phone. There was no answer. "Bah?"

He had hung up.

Nothing arrived at the house on Valentine's Day. Sandy tried to mask her disappointment when business hours ended and it became clear that nothing was coming.

"Maybe he figured out how to cancel them," Jenny suggested as she and Will left to go to dinner. "Wouldn't that just make you sad anyway?"

Yes, Sandy wanted to say, that's the point. But instead she shook her head and waved as they left. Once she was alone in the house, Sandy found herself glancing over her shoulder at the phone. She had watched the game against Sweden, seen the boys tie it in the dying seconds, and pretended to understand why Di had been as excited as she would have been if they had won. If Sandy had been paying attention and had perhaps turned on the television, her disappointment at not hearing the phone ring would have been alleviated somewhat by the fact that Bah and the boys were busy playing Czechoslovakia that night.

When Sandy got home from work on the 15th, she noticed there was a second bouquet of roses on the kitchen table next to the one Will had bought for Jenny. She examined them, looking for a card.

"Those were delivered this afternoon," Will said. He was sprawled out on the living room floor, surrounded by textbooks and paper. "They're for you."

Sandy reached out and touched a petal of one of the roses. "From who?"

Will rolled his eyes. "Come on. Guess. There was a card but it's in the garbage."

"What? Why?" Sandy turned to the trash and gingerly poked through it.

"I spilled coffee on it. Don't go through the garbage, Sandy."

"Don't throw away my things, _Will_."

She dug through the top layer of the trash, wondering if Will had strategically placed things on top of the card so she wouldn't find it, and eventually happened upon a small, rectangular card, plain except for a heart printed on the outside. It had, in fact, had coffee spilled on it and been crumpled slightly. Sandy fished it out.

"Please—please at least wash your hands," Will said from the living room, sounding pained.

Sandy ignored him. She sat at the kitchen table and opened the card, flattening it and struggling to read it. Bah had written, in his messy printing, cramped on the small writing surface:

 _Don't say I never got you anything._

 _Don't say I_ ever _got you anything for Valentine's, because I'm paying to have these delivered on the 15th, which is just a normal day. The lady at this store had me confirm three times that I didn't want the 14th, like I'm some idiot who doesn't know when Valentine's Day is._

 _Anyway, happy Friday. Give me a call when you get a chance. I'm probably thinking of you._

She crumpled the card up again in her hand and then flattened it back out on the table. "Stupid," she said.

Will was suddenly behind her, reading the card over her shoulder. "That's a pretty inconsiderate gift," he said, and Sandy jumped. "Sorry."

Sandy shook her head and pushed her chair back, colliding with her brother. "He said they were coming and that he was sorry for what he wrote—that's what he called to say the other night. I guess he could have just let them show up without warning me."

"Oh, you're right," Will said. "That's actually super considerate. My mistake. I just think it's ridiculous," he continued, when she looked up from the flowers to stare at him. "He could have found a way to cancel that order. There's definitely a way of doing that."

"He said—" Sandy stopped talking and folded her arms. "I don't want to fight with you about this."

"Who's fighting? If he doesn't want to see you anymore, he should just leave you alone. Why did he even call in the first place?"

Sandy tossed the card back into the trash. "Because of those," she said, gesturing at the flowers. "Because he got me flowers."

Will rolled his eyes. "Right. I just think it's not fair. You have no way of getting in contact with him now, but he can call you anytime because he still has this number. _And_ he was the one who told you to leave. It just doesn't seem right to me."

"Were you listening when I was talking to Jenny about what happened?"

" _Yes_."

She shook her head at him and turned away to wash her hands. As she soaped up, she started to consider what Will was saying. He was right, she thought. It _wasn't_ fair that Bah still had her phone number and could call any time, but she had no idea how to get a hold of him. He was only going to be in Lake Placid for a few more weeks, and then he'd be gone… somewhere. It wasn't necessarily her business anymore, but it didn't change the fact that he could still call from wherever he ended up. It _wasn't_ fair.

"What's the matter with you?" Will asked, studying her face as Sandy turned away from the sink to dry her hands off. "You look crazy all of the sudden."

"How long do you think it would take to drive there?"

Will folded his arms and said, "to drive. To Lake Placid. To drive to Lake Placid, New York?"

"Yeah."

"Well, for starters, it would be probably just over a full day of driving. Secondly, I wouldn't recommend doing that."

"But I could if I wanted to," Sandy said. She started to move down the hall, towards her bedroom. "I've driven that far by myself before. I drove here."

Will followed her and stood in the doorway, watching Sandy as she dug through her dresser drawers for something. "I know you did. I just think it's a really bad idea. Do you even know where they're staying?"

"The athletes village," Sandy said absently as she continued to pull drawers open.

"Okay, great, but do you know _where_ that is? And how do you think you'll get in there? They don't just let people wander in off the street. Just—" He nudged her with his toe, trying to get her to look at him. "Just stop for a second and think about it logically."

Sandy rocked back onto her heels and looked up at him. "You said it yourself. He can call any time he wants and I can't talk to him."

Will looked dumbfounded. "And so your solution is to _drive_ to Lake Placid to confront him about that? Just wait until the next time he calls!"

"Who knows when that'll be? This is the last time I'll ever know exactly where he is." She continued to dig in the dresser, finally finding what she needed in the bottom of one of the drawers.

"What's that?"

Sandy ignored him. She crawled to an open area of carpet and unfolded the map that Bah had used to chart out their trip from Minnesota to South Dakota in the fall, which he had given her as a souvenir of the trip. She couldn't see Lake Placid on the map, but she had an idea where it was, about five hours east of Buffalo. She jabbed a finger on Minneapolis, Minnesota, and placed another finger on a spot on the carpet a couple of inches away from the edge of the map, roughly where she figured Lake Placid would be. The two places seemed infinitely far apart, even on a scaled down highway map. "You figure it's about a day of driving?"

"Twenty-some hours, probably—maybe as much as thirty. And that's only if you don't hit bad traffic, and maybe a little less if you go up through Canada." Will crouched next to her and traced his finger up through the middle of Michigan and into Ontario, winding back into New York. "If it was summer you could take the ferry."

Sandy's eyes re-traced the path that Will had drawn. "Do you really think I can do this?"

Will settled back on his heels and leaned against the wall. "I think I've been pretty clear about whether I want you to. Unfortunately, I don't see any reason why you _can't._ It's _your_ car and your time. You should really think about whether you should, though."

She studied him, noting how exhausted he looked. "I don't know what to do," she said. "I feel like I ruined this very good thing and I don't know how I'm supposed to deal with it." Up to that point, she hadn't expressed this feeling, and it felt slightly therapeutic to do so.

"I _know_ ," he said. "I know that. But I think you need to just sit, take a second, and think about what the healthy thing to do is. You're talking about driving halfway across the country to see someone who wouldn't know you're coming and who, I'm sure you'll remember, is playing in a pretty important hockey tournament right now."

Slightly deflated, Sandy looked down at the map again. "I don't know what to do," she said again, more to herself than to Will.

"Do you want to know what I think?" Will asked.

"No."

"I think you need to learn how to be alone for a while," he said, unphased. "You've been in a relationship in some capacity since you left high school. And maybe it wasn't right with Ray, and maybe it wasn't right with Bah, either. But you aren't going to be comfortable with anybody until you spend some time by yourself. Hang out with Di—hell, hang out with _us_. But there's no rush. They don't shoot people for being single in their twenties, contrary to what everyone else seems to think. Just give it some time."

"That's not what I'm worried about. And that's easy for you to say," Sandy said, feeling a little petty, "coming from the guy who's basically been married since he was sixteen."

Will sat down on the floor and stretched his legs out. "Well, blame Jenny for that. She just couldn't resist me." He grinned as Sandy couldn't help but laugh. "Really, though, I think you're going to be okay. You don't need to have a guy in order to have people who care about you."

As Sandy digested this comment, she narrowed her eyes at her brother. "Did you guys all get together and decide to separately have conversations to make me feel better?"

"No," Will said, too quickly. "But wouldn't that have been a pretty nice thing to do for someone having a hard time?"

She sighed. "I guess so."


	23. Chapter 23

**Chapter 23 - March 3 - 16, 1980**

Peter leaned on the table gently at first. Then, before they could stop him, he pushed down on it with his full weight.

Di grabbed him by the arm and yanked him away from the table. "Are you _kidding_ me? Do you want to get thrown out of here?"

"How else am I supposed to check whether it can handle a lot of weight?"

"I'm never going to cook a meal as heavy as you are, and neither is Sandy. Right, Sandy?"

Sandy feigned deep thought. "Mmm, no, I don't think so. I _do_ think that salesman is following us around, though," she added, discreetly nodding in the direction of the employee who had been tailing them through the furniture store ever since Peter had started "testing" items for their strength.

Both Di and Peter turned in unison to stare at the man, who quickly walked away. "That's what happens when you _lean_ on every single thing we see," Di said, lightly whacking Peter in the chest with the back of her hand.

"So, what, are we just supposed to decide what you want based on what it _looks_ like? Why did you even _ask_ me to come? You said your folks are only going to buy you one set of furniture, I thought maybe it would…"

Sandy allowed their bickering to fade into the background as she looked around the store. The expense of moving out and furnishing an apartment was not nearly as daunting when it was cut in half—much less so after Di's parents had offered to pay for dining room furniture and a couch set. "I think they're just happy I'm moving out," Di had said, in a tone that made Sandy question whether she was joking.

The two of them had found a two-bedroom apartment that was surprisingly affordable, but by some bizarre twist of fate, the building was located on the same block as Bah's old apartment complex. Sandy had parked her car outside of her future home many times throughout the six months that she had spent with Bah. "Maybe that's the divine reason for having met him," Jenny had suggested. "Maybe it was all so you could find this great apartment."

Sandy, Di, and Peter eventually had to abandon their furniture search when Peter leaned on a particularly flimsy table and they all heard a sharp _crack_. They opted instead to walk to a nearby restaurant and get something to eat. The lunch hour rush had passed and so the three of them were seated across the nearly empty place from a table of loudly-talking young men.

"Maybe try a salad," Di told Peter, teasingly jabbing a finger into his side. "We can't have you snapping tables in half everywhere we go."

Peter opened his mouth to respond, but stopped as Sandy suddenly ducked to hide herself from view behind them. "What? What's happening?"

"Di, look at that group of guys over there," Sandy said in an urgent whisper. "Is that Robbie McClanahan with them?"

Di turned and looked, as nonchalantly as was possible at where Robbie (or, at least, it _looked_ like him) was sitting with four other guys. "I think it might be," she said, and before Sandy could stop her, she called out, "hey, Robbie!"

"Oh, _Christ_ , Di."

Peter cringed, his shoulders hunching up around his ears. "I'm sorry," he said to Sandy, as the guy who was so clearly Robbie looked over in their direction. "Do we not like this guy?"

"No, we like him," Sandy said, feeling her face starting to go red. She hunched over the table to hide herself from view, not noticing as Robbie recognized them and started to walk over. "It's just—he played with Bah on the hockey team. That's the only reason why we know him. Might be a little weird."

"Yeah." Robbie was suddenly there, standing next to the table, and Sandy jumped. "It definitely might be," he said, and slid into the booth next to Sandy. "How's it going?"

"Good," Di said, even though he'd been asking Sandy, who in turn was glad that Di was there. "What about you?"

"Oh, I'm okay," he said. "I was in town for the night so I thought I'd take some of my teammates out for lunch."

"Where are you playing now?" Sandy asked.

"Buffalo."

"In the _NHL_?" Di asked, mystified.

Robbie nodded. "You bet—we had a game in town against the North Stars last night."

"How'd it go?" Di asked, and Robbie shrugged.

"We tied them." He hesitated, and then turned to Sandy and cleared his throat. "So, how's Debbie been doing?"

Fighting back a creeping suspicion that Bah had told Robbie everything, Sandy shook her head. "I'm all right. Congratulations on the—I guess the medal and then also making it to the NHL."

Robbie grinned. "Thanks. I was—uh—I kind of thought I'd see you guys in Lake Placid, or at least just you," he said, nodding at Sandy.

"Mmm," Sandy said, making an odd gesture that was a cross between a shrug and shaking her head. Di and Peter stared at her.

"Yeah," Robbie said, scratching the back of his head. "You know, I actually ended up asking Bah when you'd show up and he—well, he told me about what happened. That was too bad. You guys were good together, I thought."

"Yeah," Sandy said, not sure what to say to this.

"It was a pretty awkward conversation, that's for sure."

"Just _imagine_ something being awkward," Di said, and Robbie and Sandy both turned to look at her. "What? We're pretending that _this_ isn't?"

"I guess not," Sandy said, shooting her friend a venomous look. "So, how's everybody doing now? Everybody _else_ , I mean. Not Bah. The boys."

"The boys?" Robbie looked skyward and breathed in through his teeth, considering this. "Well, most of them I haven't seen since we all went to the White House. A bunch of guys are with their NHL teams so I'll see them eventually: Riff is here with the North Stars—Steve Christoff, I mean, I don't know if you ever met him; Mark Johnson is in Pittsburgh; Koho went to Winnipeg; Silkie is with the Rangers…" he tailed off, glancing down at Sandy. "I don't know, people kind of scattered all over the place. I heard Pav's going to Europe or some damn thing." Robbie suddenly seemed to notice how close he was to mentioning Bah. He turned to Peter, who looked startled to be singled out so suddenly, and held out a hand. "I don't know if I ever met you. I'm Rob."

"Uh—Peter," Peter said, shaking Robbie's hand. "I'm Di's—we're—"

"You're my boyfriend, you can say it," Di said, an exasperated look on her face.

"Nice," Robbie said, smiling at them. He craned his neck to look at the table where his friends were sitting. "Well, it was nice to catch up, but I should probably be getting back." He slid back out of the booth. "See you all around."

"Bye," Di and Peter said in unison, and they exchanged a look when Sandy, unable to help herself, spoke up again.

"Where did Bah ever end up going? I just—I know that was a going concern," she added, trying and failing to seem as if the answer was of no consequence to her.

Robbie looked for a moment as if he didn't want to tell her, but then shrugged and said, "he's actually in Buffalo's system, but they sent him down to Rochester pretty much right away. In the AHL," he clarified, when Sandy gave him a blank look. "He's got—"

One of the guys sitting at Robbie's table called out, "what, are you trying to get out of footing the bill, cake eater? Get back over here!" All the other guys laughed.

"I should go," Robbie said, glancing over at his friends. "It was good to see you guys."

Once he had gone, Di leaned across the table and spoke to Sandy in a quiet voice. "Why'd you ask him where Bah was? Are you gonna try and get in touch?"

Sandy shrugged. "No. I don't know. I can't. How would I even do that? All I have is the city where he plays hockey."

"Well, you could call Information and ask for the number of the rink where they play and then go from there," Peter said, gazing thoughtfully up at the ceiling. The girls both turned to look at him and he rolled his eyes. "I mean, it's not the most difficult thing in the world."

Peter was right, Sandy thought later. It _wasn't_ difficult, when she really thought about it. Bah had essentially gone into the abyss after the Olympics and his single phone call from Lake Placid, because she didn't know where he had gone to play and didn't know how to find out. But the run-in with Robbie had given her the scrap of information required to actually contact Bah if she really wanted to. The only question that remained was whether she really wanted to.

To Sandy's credit, she resisted the urge to track Bah down for over two weeks after seeing Robbie. This was mostly because she had made herself busy shopping for furniture and dressings for her and Di's apartment and packing up the small number of belongings that she had brought from Washington to move. Moving Di out of her parents' home presented a much greater task, and so she made herself as helpful as possible.

On Sandy's last day living at Will and Jenny's house, she finally broke down. She called Information and asked, her skin crawling with uncomfortableness, for the number of the arena where the AHL team in Rochester, New York played. It seemed unfathomably stupid that she would call and ask for this phone number without even knowing the name of the team, but to her surprise, the operator responded, "no problem, ma'am, just one moment, please." After sitting on hold for a while, Sandy had the phone number for the Rochester Community War Memorial, which did not sound like the name of an arena at all, written down on an old receipt.

When she called there, Sandy tried to seem as much as possible that she was just a fan of the hockey team, prepared to do verbal gymnastics to avoid revealing that she did not know a single thing about it. "Hi, I'm looking to—um—get in touch with one of the players there?" she said, feeling fairly certain, now that she was actually on the phone with the office at this rink, that there was no way this woman in Rochester, whose name was Nicolette, would just provide her with Bah's phone number.

"You wouldn't be calling about John Harrington again, would you?"

Sandy sat for several seconds with her mouth hanging open. "I'm—um, well…"

"I don't know if you were the one who called just a minute ago, but it's like I said before—I can't just give you the phone number for the hospital. It doesn't work like that, ma'am."

Still flabbergasted, it took Sandy a moment to register what Nicolette had said. "Wait a minute. Did you say he's in the hospital?"

Nicolette sighed. "You're _not_ who I spoke to before, are you? I'm sorry—you sound like her a little bit. Who were you calling about?"

"Well," Sandy said, "it _was_ John Harrington, actually."

"Jeez, he's popular for a new guy. How'd you find out about what happened? The other lady—I think she said she was a relative of some kind—she said she called the rink in Hershey to get the score of the game and someone there told her, so she called us. And obviously _we_ knew about it just because the trainer called to get some information from his file. Harrington's, I mean. And I said, 'hey lady, I can't tell you anything either.' She could have been anybody, you know? And so _she_ says—"

"Sorry," Sandy interrupted, putting her forehead in her hand. "But _what_ happened to him?"

"Oh," Nicolette said. "Well, you know they're playing in Hershey today, right?"

"... right," Sandy, who had not known this, said.

"Right. Apparently one of their big goons smoked this Harrington and they had to take him to the hospital—I guess he has a concussion and his jaw is all busted up and the whole thing. They had to carry him off the ice on a stretcher because they were worried he messed up his back. The trainer told me," she continued, lowering her voice slightly, "that they had to delay the game to clean the blood off the ice. _The blood_."

The radio in the living room that Will had left on started playing, somewhat terrifyingly, "Only the Good Die Young" by Billy Joel and Sandy had a vivid memory of Bah singing the song to her as they drove to Beresford, South Dakota with Dave Christian held hostage in the back seat. She felt sick. This wasn't her business anymore. What was she supposed to do with this information now that she had it?

Sandy thanked Nicolette and hung up the phone. She sank down onto the floor, leaning her head against the cabinets and stared down at the receipt on which she had scrawled the number for the rink in Rochester. She willed herself to crumple it up and throw it away.

Before she could, the front door suddenly banged open. "Good news," Will said, and Sandy heard him stomping snow off of his shoes and removing his jacket. "A guy I know from the U said we could borrow his truck tomorrow morning to move all your stuff. We don't have to strap that bed on top of the—whoa, what's wrong?" He stopped short at the sight of Sandy on the kitchen floor.

"I did something stupid," Sandy said. "Bah's in the hospital."

"Well," Will replied, lowering himself onto the floor next to her. "I highly doubt what _actually_ happened is as bad as _that_ sounds. Do you want to explain?"

Sandy sighed and told him the whole story, starting with running into Robbie. When she had finished, Will was studying his hands, apparently deep in thought.

"So let me get this straight," he said. "On your last night living in my house, you made a long distance call, from _my_ phone, to _Rochester_?"

They stared at each other for a moment before both starting to laugh. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'll pay you back. I didn't even think about it."

"It's okay," Will said. "I guess I'm just surprised. I'm not trying to be, you know, judgemental or anything, but that seems sort of—well, sort of unhealthy."

"I don't know, Will," Sandy said. "That seems pretty judgemental to me."

"Well, I'm _sorry_. I've been watching you be sad for about a month and it's—and yes, you've been sad," he added, as she opened her mouth to say that she was fine. "And that's perfectly okay. But it's not going to make it better to do—you know—whatever it is that you've done here today."

"I know." Sandy hung her head. "I know it's not. I don't know what I was thinking."

"You miss him," Will said. "There's nothing wrong with that. Is he—what did they say happened to him out there?"

Sandy, who had been busy feeling sorry for herself, suddenly remembered that Bah was hurt and in the hospital. "Oh, God. I guess someone hit him and they had to take him off the ice on a stretcher. She said he broke his jaw and has a concussion. They had to take time to _clean the blood off of the ice_ ," she added, and felt better being as worried as she was when she saw Will's reaction.

He made a clicking noise with his tongue. "That's awful, Sandy. At least he's at the hospital now, I guess. People are looking after him."

"I guess."

They sat in silence for a long moment. Finally, Will cleared his throat. "Can I admit something to you? Just while we're confessing things?"

"Sure," Sandy said.

He sighed. "I really—you know, I just really, _really hate_ hockey."

Sandy threw her head back and laughed, feeling somewhat lighter. After a second's pause, Will joined in, too.

"I've _tried_ ," he said. "I really have—I've been to games at the U and everything, and it's not like there wasn't hockey back home, but _God_. It's like I'm the only person who doesn't _get_ it. I thought you would be the same, but then you went and started hanging out with one of them."

Sandy continued to laugh. "Well, sorry to disappoint," she said. "If it helps, I wasn't spending time with Bah _because_ he's a hockey player. He just happened to be one."

"I guess that's bound to happen here—law of large numbers and all that," Will said, grinning over at her. "It just never made sense to me, though. And now look—look what happened to _him_. Why would you put yourself in a situation where you could get hurt like that? I just don't get it."

"I don't know." Sandy shrugged. "He loves it. It's his life. Are you saying you're not going to let your kid play hockey?" she added, raising her eyebrows at him.

Will rolled his eyes. "Yeah, because what I really want is for my child to get beaten up by hillbilly thugs for not fitting in. No," he said, shaking his head. "If that kid wants to play hockey, I'll be good about it. I'm just—" He paused, glancing at her. "Do you think I'll be a good dad?"

She blinked, surprised by the question. "Of course I do, Will. Why, do you think you _won't_ be?"

"I don't know. When people found out we were having this kid, they all reacted by saying what a great mom Jenny would be. Nobody says that about me. I'm not—you know, jealous or anything—I _know_ Jenny will be an amazing parent—she's good at everything she does—but I have a hard time seeing myself in that role, you know, where I have this whole person who I'm responsible for keeping safe and alive and—and happy."

"Will, if you're not sure how to keep people safe and alive, I have some bad news for you about your future career."

Will snorted. "I know, I know," he said. "It's different than that, though—a different part of my brain. I can't really explain it. I'm sure I won't feel this way forever, but it's scary, you know?" He cleared his throat, realizing to whom he was speaking. "Well, I mean, obviously you _know_ —I'm just saying—"

"I get it," Sandy said, cutting him off. "It's—well, it's not something I ever had a chance to get over, but I can't imagine you not being a great dad. You'll figure it out." She patted him on the leg. "I think you already have it figured out, honestly."

Will looked down at the floor. "That means a lot," he said. "I'm sure—"

He was cut off by the sound of the phone ringing. Will looked up at it. "What do you think the odds are that it's someone from the east coast calling to figure out how _you're_ doing?"

Sandy smacked him in the arm as she stood and picked it up. "Hello?"

"Hey." It was Jenny. "Is Will there? Wait—hang on," she said, just as Sandy moved to hand Will the phone. "I need you to keep him calm. I mean—maybe you should even drive when you come…"

"What are you talking about?" Sandy asked, and Will looked up at her from the floor, his curiosity piqued.

"Okay," Jenny said. "Will just dropped me off here at the school a little while ago, and I've been working on lesson plans for when I'm gone—and I think my water just broke."

" _What_?"

"What?" Will said, getting to his feet.

"Give the phone to Will—he's going to freak out when I tell him, so make sure he remembers to bring that stupid bag he's been packing and unpacking with all the stuff for the hospital."

Sandy handed the phone to Will. "Hello? Oh, Jay—what's going—?" Will stopped talking, and Sandy watched as his face turned beet red, and then drained of colour again so quickly that she worried he might faint. "Okay. Okay. Just stay where you are. We're coming."

On the other end, Sandy distinctly heard Jenny say, "where would I even _go_?" before Will hung the phone back up.

He turned to stare at Sandy, his face still white as a sheet. "She's having the baby," he said. "It's happening right now. Right after I said I didn't think I'd be a good dad."

"It's gonna be fine, Will." Sandy shepherded her brother out of the kitchen and down the hallway towards his and Jenny's bedroom. "She said something to me about a bag full of stuff for the hospital? Grab it and we can go get her."

"Yeah. Okay. Yeah." Will bumbled around the bedroom briefly before fishing an overnight bag out from underneath the bed. "Okay. Yes. Let's go. Maybe you'd better drive. I'm—"

"Losing it?"

"Yeah, yes," Will said, following Sandy out of the house. "Wow."

They drove over to the school, and Jenny came waddling out.

"So, how was everybody else's day going, before I went and made it all about me?" Jenny asked once they were on their way again, hurtling down the road towards the hospital. Will sat behind her in the back seat, massaging her shoulders and doing breathing exercises. They seemed to be more for his benefit than for hers.

"I don't know," Will said, distracted and huffing and puffing like a maniac. "I—it's been—Sandy said Bah's in the hospital."

Jenny craned her neck to look at Sandy. "Bah's at the hospital? Here in town? Waiting for us?"

"What? No," Sandy said. "In Hershey. He got hurt at his game this afternoon."

"Oh, no," Jenny said. She batted Will's hands away and rubbed Sandy's arm. "That's terrible. I'm sure he'll be—wait, though. How do you know that? I thought you guys weren't talking."

Sandy exchanged a glance with Will in the rear view mirror. "It's—not really important anymore," she said.

After dropping Jenny and Will off at the doors of the hospital, Sandy drove around in the parking lot, searching for a spot. She parked the car and then sat, trying to collect herself before going inside. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the piece of paper on which she had written the phone number for the rink in Rochester. She studied it, toying again with the idea of just crumpling it up and throwing it away, before folding it up again and putting it into her purse.

Sandy had thankfully not spent a lot of time in hospitals in her life. Over the next eight hours, though, she felt that she had filled some kind of quota. Once they wheeled Jenny into delivery, Will joined her there, leaving Sandy by herself out in the waiting room. She drank cup after cup of acidic and lukewarm coffee and tried to keep busy while Will periodically hustled in and out to give her updates.

She had plenty of time to sit and reflect on what had happened just before all the baby panic had started. If by some strange coincidence Bah had been there in Rochester and had been brought up to the phone, what would she have said to him? The fact that she couldn't even pretend to know was somewhat disturbing. The thought of Bah, alone and in pain, in a hospital in an unfamiliar city, was an awful one, and Sandy felt childish and self-absorbed for ever trying to get in contact with him at all. What Bah did and what happened to him weren't her concern anymore. This was another awful thought.

Finally, after a long stretch of time with no new information, Will came out in a daze and sank into the seat next to Sandy. There were tear tracks down his cheeks and his eyes were wider than she had ever seen them. "A boy," he said, his voice hoarse. "She had a boy. I have a _son_."

Sandy reached over and gripped Will's wrist wordlessly. He let out a long, shaky breath and put his head back.

Once he had regained his composure a little, Will looked over at her, dark circles surrounding his eyes. "You look like hell," he said, the picture of the pot calling the kettle black. "I can't believe you stayed out here for the whole time."

"Of course," Sandy said. "Who's gonna drive you guys home?" She grinned at Will, who laughed with as much energy as he could muster. "How's Jenny?"

"She's good," he said. "Great. She's the best. She's resting right now with—with the baby. I figured I'd better come out and tell you before I pass out, too." He ran his hands through his hair and sighed again, resting his head against the wall and closing his eyes.

"How does it feel?" Sandy asked, after a long moment had passed.

Will opened one of his eyes and peered at her. "I probably seem a little subdued, but there's a ticker tape parade going through my mind right now." He paused as she laughed. "I'm terrified," he added. "I'm so, so afraid, but I can't—it's good, I think. It's incredible."

Sandy squeezed her brother's wrist and said nothing, and the two of them sat in silence.

Finally, Will got to his feet. "I should get back in there," he said. "You know, to my wife and son."

Sandy grinned. "Do you have a name for him yet?"

"Yeah," Will said without missing a beat. "We were thinking about maybe calling him Bah."

"Well," Sandy said, rolling her eyes, "I mean, at least that means he'll never have to meet somebody with the same name as him."

Will laughed and started to back away. "I wouldn't be so sure about that," he said with a shrug.

It had started as a fairly unremarkable day but had unraveled in several unexpected, bizarre ways. In the future, whenever Sandy thought about the day that her nephew Noah was born, she always remembered, as an afterthought, that the last "normal" thing she'd been doing was talking to a chatty woman in Rochester named Nicolette and listening to Billy Joel.

* * *

 **For the sake of interest to those of you guys who maybe aren't as obsessively familiar with Real-Life-Bah's Wikipedia page as I am, this Hershey story actually happened, with the broken jaw and the concussion. I had to stretch my creeping abilities to find the actual date that this game took place for the sake of historical accuracy (which you _know_ I'm all about). It ended in a tie, incidentally. They couldn't even win the game for him after all that. **


	24. Chapter 24

**Just a heads up if you get to the end of this one and it seems like it's the end of the story** — **it's not, there's two more chapters coming after this one. You'll also be happy to hear that this is the last one that doesn't feature Bah.**

* * *

 **Chapter 24 - April 7, 1980**

The interviewer, who had introduced himself as David, studied Sandy's resume with apparent interest. Then he laid the two pages out on the table between them, as if he was showing Sandy something she had not seen before. "All right. So, you've been employed at… Lawson's Family Grocer, it says here, for the past seven months or so. How are you liking it there? What's your reasoning behind wanting to find a new job?"

Sandy smiled, mostly at having just been lobbed one of the questions Peter had said she would be asked when he and Di had attempted to coach her the night before. "I've really enjoyed working there, but at this point I'm ready to expand on the experience I've gained and broaden my responsibilities," she recited. "I feel like I'm ready for more of a challenge."

It hadn't taken long after Sandy and Di moved into their apartment for Sandy to realize that she had been coddled for basically her entire life. She had gone directly from living with her parents to living with Ray, who had paid all the bills and for all the food; from there she had moved in with Jenny and Will, who had done the same and expected very little in terms of rent money. Sandy had never been independently responsible. This conclusion made her nervous. It didn't help, she thought, that she had a job that really required no work and that she had only gotten because Di also worked there. And so Sandy had thrown together a resume and had been sending them to any employer that she noticed was hiring.

It hadn't been going well. She didn't have much experience, other than the store, and she didn't really have anyone she could use as a reference. The solution to this issue was to list Di as her manager at the grocery store—which wasn't a _complete_ lie, and to slightly exaggerate her credibility as an office employee.

The fact remained that the accounting firm at which David was an executive needed typists, and Sandy had evidently inflated her speed and accuracy numbers just enough to get herself an interview. It was Sandy's first one, and she was trying not to make that too obvious.

"Now, I'm noticing that you haven't had much office experience. Can you think of anything you've dealt with, professionally speaking, that would prepare you for this particular job?"

The job was typing, Sandy wanted to say. All it really required from her was the ability to type accurately. "I helped with some of the administrative work while working with my father's company," she said instead. This was also not a complete lie. She had worked for a few days in the office in her own home, organizing the cluttered client files that had been left a mess.

They went on like that for a while, with Sandy convincingly stretching the truth about her job history and abilities, before David got to his final question. "What do you think you would bring to the department and the company that the other applicants for this job wouldn't be able to bring?"

It was a question that Sandy should have expected to hear at a job interview, but she was caught completely flat-footed by it nonetheless. "Uh," she said, feeling her eyes going wide and struggling to remember the suggestions Peter and Di had provided. Even David looked a little surprised to see the question giving her such trouble. "Well, I work well with others, and I think I'm able to get along with just about anybody."

"Okay," David said, thinking, like a fool, that she was done speaking.

Not seeing anything resembling a positive reaction on his face, Sandy blindly continued speaking. "And I think the fact that I've never worked in this exact setting can be seen as a _positive_ thing," she said, "because I'll be easy to teach about the way this specific company works, and I don't have to, you know, _unlearn_ things that I learned at other places, and it won't…"

Sandy might have talked for another minute, or another twenty-six minutes. She was aware of the end of the interview, when David politely thanked her for coming in and shook her hand before leading her out of his office. Shortly after that, she found herself standing on the street. "Holy fuck," she breathed, and then grimaced in apology to two elderly ladies walking past who had heard her and looked back, scandalized.

It was the first one, Sandy reasoned with herself. She had never actually _done_ a job interview before; she couldn't have expected to have it go perfectly. But having gotten caught up on such an easy question was disheartening.

Then, a few buildings down the block, coming out of a men's clothing store, she saw him.

He was accompanied by two guys Sandy didn't know and his hair was cut shorter than before, but it was Bah, she was sure of it. He and his friends were walking in the opposite direction. Sandy hesitated for a moment, wondering if Bah would even want to talk to her, and then took off walking briskly towards them. The street was fairly crowded, and she got hung up in the groups of people moving in the opposite direction. "Sorry. Pardon me. Whoops, I'm sorry about that—" she kept up a steady stream of apologies to her fellow pedestrians as she ducked and dodged around them like a basketball player, trying to catch up with Bah.

Eventually, she was upon them as they stood at a crosswalk, waiting for the light to change. Sandy took a deep breath and tapped on Bah's shoulder.

The man who turned around to look at her was definitely not Bah. Up close, Sandy wasn't sure why she ever thought it was. He raised his eyebrows. "Can I help you?"

" _Oh_ ," Sandy said. "No, sorry. I thought—I thought you were—" Her voice trailed off as the light across the street turned green. The guy's friend nudged him to start walking, and he gave her a sympathetic look before taking off.

It was not, overall, the best day. Later, Sandy told Di this story while they sat at the kitchen table. "You're kidding me," Di laughed. "I'm so sorry that happened to you. What did you do?"

"What _could_ I do? I just _stood_ there," Sandy said, shaking her head. "You should have seen the way he looked at me, like, 'this poor idiot.' Oh my God."

Di continued to giggle. "Well, at least it was just a stranger. You'll never see him again, probably. Did the interview go well, at least?"

"That's another thing. He stumped me with the question about why I would be a good employee," Sandy said.

"You've had yourself kind of a bad day, haven't you?" Di said, and stood up. "Wine?"

"It's three o'clock," Sandy said.

Di shook her head. "I don't think I asked what time it was. The question was, 'wine?'"

"Okay. Wine," Sandy agreed.

Di went over to the cupboard above the refrigerator, and retrieved a bottle of red wine. Peter had brought over multiple bottles from his parents' restaurant as housewarming gifts. "I doubt the interview went as badly as you think," she said as she poured them each a glass. "That's the kind of thing that never _feels_ like it went well, but you never know. And if it doesn't work out, whatever." She set down a glass in front of Sandy. "You'll keep trying. Statistically, you kind of have to find something at _some point_."

Sandy took a drink. "Great. Thanks," she said.

They drank what was left of the bottle in the cupboard and then opened another. By her fourth glass, Sandy's cheeks started to feel warm and she stopped worrying about whether she was going to get the job. Just then she was drunk in the afternoon on a weekday with her best friend. "I don't even know what I would have said to him if it _was_ him," she said after a while, apropos of nothing.

"If that guy had been Bah, you mean?" Di asked.

"Yeah. I just started trying to catch up with him without really stopping to worry about that but now that I think about it, what would I have even said to him? And also, he doesn't even live here. He lives in Rochester now. You know?"

Di nodded, resting her chin on her fist. She swirled the remaining wine in her glass and downed it. "Don't they ever play games here?"

"No, I think they only ever play on the east coast," Sandy said. Then she paused, narrowing her eyes at Di. She had never told her friend about calling Rochester. It was too embarrassing, but she felt suddenly compelled to confess.

"What?"

"I'm gonna tell you something."

Di straightened up in her chair. "Yes, please."

"Do you remember when we ran into Robbie at that restaurant and he told us that Bah was in Rochester? And then Peter said how easy it would be to figure out the number for the rink there?" Di nodded and Sandy continued, "turns out it's actually _very_ easy."

"Oh, _no_ ," Di groaned, and then started to giggle again, putting her hands on her face. "What did you do?"

The whole thing suddenly struck Sandy as incredibly funny, and she started to laugh as well. "Well, why don't you try to guess," she said, and Di threw her head back and laughed. "I called there and I had no idea what I was going to say to him if he was there, but then—" she stopped laughing just as suddenly, remembering. "But then the lady there told me that Bah was in the hospital, and then _we_ had to go to the hospital because Noah was coming." Sandy sighed. "A lot happened."

" _What_?" Di looked up. "What? What happened to Bah? Why was he in he hospital?"

"He got hurt during a game," Sandy said.

"Did you ever call back to find out whether he was okay?"

"Of course not."

"' _Of course not_?'" Di repeated, looking incredulous. "What do you mean, 'of course not?' Don't you care? He could have _died_."

"He didn't _die_ ," Sandy replied. "He broke his jaw, he didn't get stabbed. And I _do_ care. I just don't think it's any of my business now."

Di rolled her eyes. "It _is_. You obviously cared enough to try and call the first time. You should have called again. You should try sometime."

"Maybe," Sandy said, without much enthusiasm.

"Yeah, sure." Di eyed Sandy carefully. "You didn't happen to keep that number, did you?"

There was a pause while Sandy tried to remember where her purse was. Realizing that it was on the couch behind Di, she quickly got to her feet and tried to run over to it before the other girl noticed, but Di put an abrupt end to this plan by reaching around and grabbing the purse.

"Di, don't," Sandy said, watching as her friend rooted around in the bottom of her purse. But she sat back down in her seat, knowing and almost feeling excited for what would likely come next. Di was an unstoppable object.

Di barely looked up from the purse. "Yeah, you're really going out of your way to try and stop me." After a moment she fished out the receipt and held it up. "So, I'm assuming it'll be me making the phone call?"

Sandy sighed. "That's a fair assumption. What are you gonna say?"

"I'm asking them for his phone number there. Do you think he has one set up yet?"

Sandy stood up abruptly just as Di moved to pick up the phone, knocking her knees against the bottom of the table. "Don't ask that. I thought you were going to get them to tell you whether he's okay."

"I can ask that too," Di said. She started to dial the number and paused, gesturing at Sandy to sit back down. "Drink your wine."

Obediently, Sandy sat, drained her glass, and then refilled both of their glasses from the bottle on the table.

Di finished dialling and brought the phone over to the table. "Oh—what's the team called? Really?" she asked, incredulous, as Sandy shrugged. "At least give me _something_ to work—good afternoon," Di interrupted herself suddenly as someone on the other end picked up. "I have kind of an odd question for you. My brother, um, John plays there, and I was just wondering if I could get some information."

"Oh, my God," Sandy said, putting her head in her hands.

"His name is John Harrington—oh, that's right, Bah, I wasn't sure if he was still introducing himself using that name—he gave me his phone number when he got it hooked up out there, and I think one of my kids threw it out or something, because I can't find it anywhere," Di said. "And you know men, they never call you unless you ask them to, and I can't because—right, that's right, I don't have the number. Do you think I could get that information from someone who works with the team there?" As she listened to the other person's reply, Di suddenly sat up straighter. "Oh! No, not if he's out in the ice. No, I wouldn't want to bother him. No, that's really fine—you don't have it just there—? Oh, okay, I'll hold."

"Is he there right now?" Sandy mouthed the words at Di, who nodded and covered the receiver.

"I guess they're just finishing practice. Holy _shit_. I didn't think he'd be _there_. She just went to get the manager, apparently he has the number. Should I hang up? Does Bah even have a sister?"

Sandy held up two fingers, and Di straightened the phone against her ear again and waved at Sandy to be quiet even though she had not spoken. "Hi. Hi there, Roger, how are you doing? Oh, I'm great, thanks. Did the lady I was speaking with before tell you—? Oh, wonderful. Great. Just hang on, let me get a pen." She motioned furiously at Sandy, who stood and started digging through drawers, returning with a dull old pencil. Di held it up and frowned with dismay.

"Sorry," Sandy mouthed.

"Okay, Roger, go ahead," Di said, and scribbled a phone number down on the receipt below the number for the arena. "Oh, you're a lifesaver, Roger, thank you so much. Right. Right, sure. Tell him I said hi—oh. Oh, he's—oh, you know, Roger, my daughter is just getting into my cupboards here, I'd better just let you go. O-okay. Okay, buh-bye, Roger. Buh-bye, now." Di scrambled to her feet and hung up the phone. She turned to look at Sandy, her eyes wide, but Sandy was sitting with her hands covering her face. "He was there in the office. That man almost gave him the phone."

Sandy let out a loud groan into her hands.

Di made a dismissive sound. "What are you _ughhh_ ing about? We got his number. I can't believe how easy that was."

"Well, it''s not as if I'm going to actually _call_ him," Sandy said, looking up at her friend. "And now, look. He'll talk to his sister tonight and ask her how she lost his phone number, and his sister will say that she didn't, and his mind will go to the first logical place, which is, of course, me."

"That's awfully self-absorbed of you, Sandy."

Sandy laughed. "I'm gonna throw up."

"No you're not. Drink some more wine. You're just—" Di was cut off by the sound of the phone ringing.

They turned in unison to look at it. "Do not answer that," Sandy said.

"It can't be him. It couldn't _possibly_ be him. How could he know to call here?" The phone continued to ring.

"There are machines that tell you the number that's calling you. Maybe they have one there."

Di got to her feet. "He's not at the _CIA_ , Sandy. I just got his actual, real phone number by just pretending to be his sister. I doubt they're working with that kind of technology over there." Sandy covered her face up again and Di picked up the phone. "Hello?" She heard Di exhale loudly and looked up to see her friend smiling.

"Who is it?"

"It's Peter."

That evening, once the effects of the wine had worn off slightly, Sandy was left alone in the apartment after Peter picked Di up to take her out for dinner. Di had left the receipt showing their ill-gotten gains on the kitchen table, and Sandy found herself staring at it from across the room as she prepared herself a bowl of cereal to eat. Then she sat at the table, munching and continuing to look.

She wasn't going to call. Really, Sandy thought, it didn't make sense to bother. She would have to explain how she'd gotten his phone number, and _that_ would be a can of worms she wasn't prepared to open. It was better to leave it. Besides, Sandy knew that she had no idea what she would say to Bah if she had him on the phone—that she missed him? That was certainly true, but what would it accomplish to tell him that? Sandy finished her cereal and stood. She wasn't going to call.

After deciding this, she spent a while flicking through the channels on the television before turning it off again and getting to her feet. Through the window, Sandy watched as a woman jogged past the building on the street and suddenly felt a deep longing to be doing the same thing. It had been what seemed like a long time since she'd last gone for a run. _That_ was what was missing, she thought. She'd stopped when it had gotten cold out, and it felt in that moment that going for a run would solve all of Sandy's problems.

Moments later, Sandy sat on the front steps of the apartment building, tying the laces on the running shoes that Bah had bought for her. She stretched her legs out and studied the shoes for a moment, remembering the night she had gotten them. Then she stood up and took off.

The mistake she had made, in choosing to go for a run just a few hours after drinking several glasses of wine, was immediately clear. Sandy got about four blocks away from home before having to stop and look around for a trash can or something similar. Not finding one, she turned and threw up into the gutter. "Oh my God," she said out loud, glancing around to check if anyone had seen her. The street was empty, and she so started to walk home, feeling like a maniac.

It was a fairly warm evening for late March, and so Sandy sat down on the front steps once she got back, breathing in the fresh air. Her head slowly started to clear and she felt a little better. She tried to tell herself that it was the cleansing night air and not the fact that she'd just thrown up a stomach full of wine onto the street.

After Sandy had been sitting out there for a while, she saw Peter's car pull up. She watched as Di got out, and Peter waved at Sandy before driving off. Di paused at the sight of Sandy sitting there as she walked up to the building.

"How was dinner?" Sandy asked.

Di shrugged. "It was nice. He's losing his mind because final exams are coming up, so it's good to distract him a little," she said, and then seemed to notice that Sandy was dressed for exercise. "Jesus, you didn't go for a _run_ , did you?" She sat down next to Sandy on the step.

"I wouldn't really call it that," Sandy replied, and explained what had happened. To her surprise, Di didn't laugh.

"Are you okay?" she asked, studying Sandy's face.

Sandy made a noncommittal gesture with her hands. "I want to say yes, but I feel like there's some evidence saying otherwise." She sighed. "You know, I feel like you really haven't _known_ me when nothing's happening in my life. Everything has been so dramatic since I got here—I just want to be boring for a while, you know?"

Di leaned her head on Sandy's shoulder. "So, be boring. That would probably be fun for you in comparison."

"I'm not going to call Bah."

"Okay." Di nodded. "If that's what you want, you don't have to. I just don't want you to feel like you didn't get to have a real ending with him. You shouldn't have to feel—you know—unsatisfied about any of it."

"I don't," Sandy lied and then, when Di looked up and rolled her eyes, added, "well, maybe I do _a little_ , but it's not going to ruin my life or anything. That's just the way it's going to have to be."

Di put an arm around Sandy and squeezed her shoulder. "You should do whatever you need to do to be happy. That's all I want for you."

Sandy smiled. "I will be. I'll find a real job and start learning how to be an adult. And no more boys for a while."

"Okay, no boys," Di agreed. She started to stand up. "If that's what we're doing, I gotta go in and call Peter to break up with him. He'll be disappointed, but I'm sure he'll understand."

Sandy laughed and tugged Di back down onto the step. "Peter can be an exception."

"Deal," Di said.

And for a while, Sandy stuck to her plan. The next day, while Di was working at the store, David from the accounting firm called her to ask about how Sandy was as an employee. Later that afternoon, he phoned Sandy at home to offer her the typist position. It wasn't particularly interesting work, but it didn't matter.

She adhered to the "no boys" rule as well. Sandy threw away the receipt with Bah's phone number on it. It didn't work out, she thought. Will had made a good point—it hadn't been right with Bah or Ray. In the end, she tried to think of them as learning experiences and started to enjoy spending time by herself a little more.

In the months that followed, Sandy really did become fond of being boring. There were no hockey games to attend, no late night phone calls from distant cities, and no creeping paranoia to ruin it all. In the back of her mind, though, sometimes Sandy wondered what Bah was up to.


	25. Chapter 25

**Chapter 25 - July 25 - 26, 1980**

"Eating lunch outside again today?"

Sandy looked up from her typewriter. Charlie was tall and good-looking, with blue eyes and a jawline that could have been chiseled out of stone. He had a face that had been hard to say no to at first, but Sandy thought she'd gotten pretty good at it. "I think so," she said. She leaned back in her chair and craned her neck, trying to see out of the windows across the room. The sky was darkly clouded and it was clearly about to rain. Trying to keep her facial expression neutral, she looked back over at Charlie. "It's summertime out there, you know."

"Oh, I know," he said. He was technically a summer student, and had only gotten his position because his father was in management. Sandy wasn't sure what Charlie actually _did_ at the office other be an unsuccessful flirt. "Someday it won't be so nice out and you'll have to eat with me."

Sandy raised her eyebrows, hoping that he wouldn't turn around and see what it looked like outside. "Mm-hmm." It had been lucky, if not a little bit odd that Charlie seemed to really hate the summer heat, and she had quickly discovered that the only ways to avoid him were to leave the office and eat her bagged lunch while sitting on a bench alone in downtown Minneapolis or eat in the washroom, because he seemed to track her down no matter where she was in the building. Even more lucky was the fact that Charlie would be going back to the U at the end of the summer. It would be difficult to avoid him forever. The rule, after all, was no boys.

When Charlie had sauntered off, Viola, the woman sitting at the workstation in front of Sandy, turned in her seat. "You're too nice. I'd have told him to shove it by now."

Sandy laughed. "Aw, you would never do that. It's not worth the trouble." She reached into her desk drawer for her lunch (a ham and cheese sandwich and an apple, the same as any other day) and stood, checking to see if Charlie was still lurking around. "See you in a bit."

The rain started to come down as soon as Sandy left the office, spitting a little at first but escalating into a full on downpour within a few minutes. She huddled in the doorway of a building about a block away from work, watching as people hurried past, trying to avoid getting wet. Sandy ate her slightly damp sandwich and considered just going back, but thought better of it. She was already outside and was keeping relatively dry. Besides, the prospect of having to spend her lunch hour with Charlie chilled her more deeply than a little rain ever could.

Another group of people hustled past, and Sandy, who was looking in the other direction, didn't notice as one of them stopped abruptly and turned to look at her.

"Sandy?"

Recognizing the voice, Sandy froze with her mouth full of sandwich. She turned as Bah stepped out of the way of the foot traffic and into the doorway as well. He shook rainwater out of his hair like a dog, and then the two of them simply looked at each other for a long moment. "What are you doing?" he eventually asked.

Sandy held up her sandwich. "Eating lunch," she said. "What are _you_ doing?"

"Well, I was walking back to my car," he said. "I just got done eating with Art—do you remember Art?" He paused for her to nod. "Right. Well, anyway, yeah. I was in meeting with him because I'm in town for the day. Do you... live here?" Bah jerked his thumb at the door behind Sandy.

"No." Sandy shook her head. "I work just down the street," she said, gesturing over her shoulder in the general direction of the office. "I usually find a bench somewhere, but—"

"Right, the rain." Bah cut her off, bobbing his head up and down. There was a long pause. "So, how have you been?"

Sandy shrugged, taking a quick mental inventory of how she actually _was._ "I've been good," she finally determined. "There's been a lot going on. But I guess you'd know a little about that."

Bah narrowed his eyes and furrowed his brow, feigning deep confusion. "How so?" he asked, and they both laughed. Sandy felt a rush of gratitude and the tension that had knotted up in her shoulders the moment Bah had appeared dissipated somewhat. "Yeah, it's been pretty wild," he said.

"Well, congratulations on everything, if it's not too late to say that."

"Oh, no, it's never too late," Bah said, grinning. "I figure everyone will forget about all of it within a year, so I'm gonna take anything I can get. Thank you, though. What's been going on for you?"

A car drove past on the street and splashed a group of people standing near the edge of the sidewalk. "Mostly just this," Sandy said. "I've been working at this office since April."

"Liking it?"

Sandy shrugged. "It's okay. I'm just typing, but it's good experience."

Bah nodded. "Yep. That _is_ something that people say about jobs they don't like."

She laughed. "It's not something I want to do forever, that's all. I can see myself getting bored at some point. The people are nice, though," she added, not wanting to seem like a whiner.

"Well, that's something." He folded his arms and frowned at her, a thoughtful expression on his face. "How's everybody doing? Will and Jenny? Di? Still with the senator?"

"They're all good," Sandy said. "Di is still dating Peter, they're probably going to get married and run the country together. Jenny had her baby in March—Noah. So they've got their hands full with him right now. Here, I've got—" She handed him the crumpled paper bag that had held her lunch while she rummaged in her purse for her wallet. "I've got a picture," she said, holding up the wallet for him to look at the photograph inside.

Bah peered at the picture of the wrinkly baby with great (potentially fake, Sandy knew that people weren't always as excited to see a photo of her nephew as she was to show it) interest. "Oh, he looks like a nice little guy. Real serious, like his dad. Congratulations, Aunt Sandy," he said, grinning at her. "That's great. Did you end up moving out of their place?"

Sandy nodded. "Yeah, in the spring. I'm actually really close to where you were living before. Where do you stay when it isn't hockey season?"

"I've been with some friends in Duluth for the summer," he said. "Just so I can keep training—I'm still not sure where I'm going next season, so it doesn't really make sense to rent something long term."

"You don't know where you're playing next season? It's July!"

"Such is life, right? You know about that." Bah grinned at her. "I have a few options in the works right now. Nothing definite, though."

"You don't think you'll play in Rochester again?"

"How did you know I was playing in Rochester?"

Sandy felt her stomach drop. "I—I was—" she stopped stammering and sighed. "I ran into Robbie in March and he told me."

"Oh, I know." Bah laughed out loud at Sandy's expression. "What, you think you're the only person in the world who talks to Robbie? He was only about an hour away when I was in Rochester. He told me you guys had a really nice, really awkward talk."

"Not sure why he would have thought that," Sandy replied, and Bah laughed again. She glanced down at her watch and, noticing the time, let out a little gasp. "Oh, shit. I'm gonna be late. I should be getting back."

"Oh." Bah squeezed the crumpled paper bag in his hand and frowned. "Okay. Well, it was nice to run into you."

Sandy held out her hand to take the trash from him. "I can throw that out. It was—nice. Nice seeing you, I mean. Thanks for stopping to chat."

The rain had slowed to a faint drizzle. As Sandy stepped out of the doorway, Bah watched her, still frowning. "Yeah, of course. Take care of yourself, okay?"

"Okay. You too. We'll see you."

"See you."

Sandy had to physically turn her body in the direction of the office in order to start walking back.

As she reached for the door handle to go back inside, Sandy heard Bah call her name. She turned and saw him jogging after her, dodging around the other people on the sidewalk.

"Sorry to be, you know, dramatic," he said once he'd caught up with her. "But I was just thinking—I'm in town for the night. Why don't we go get a drink or something later?

Sandy felt a grin spread across her face and nodded. "That sounds like fun."

"Sounds like a bad idea." Di dug in a pile of clothes with her toe, looking for a pair of Sandy's jeans that had mysteriously disappeared. It had been a few hours since Sandy had come home from work with the news that she had made plans to meet up with Bah that night.

"Well," Sandy said, crawling out from under her bed, where she had been searching, "I guess you should have been there to stop me from saying yes."

Di sighed and crouched, tugging a pair of jeans out of the pile by the leg. "Is this them?"

"Yes." Sandy gratefully took the pants from her friend. "Do you want to call Peter and come with us? I'm sure Bah wouldn't mind."

"Yeah. I'm sure he would _love_ that. Peter's got something going on tonight, so he wouldn't be able to go even if I wanted to."

Sandy swapped her work skirt for the jeans and stood in front of the mirror. She frowned at Di's reflection across the room. "Why are you being such a pill about this? You _like_ Bah, remember?"

"Oh, I _love_ Bah," Di said. "Unfortunately, so do you."

There was a long moment of silence while Sandy gaped at Di in the mirror. "I—what—? I'm not—I don't—Di, that's—it's not—" Eventually Sandy just stopped talking and looked down at the floor.

Di folded her arms. "Exactly. Just be careful. That's all I'm saying." With that, she wandered off down the hallway.

Sandy had agreed to meet Bah at Hubert's, "for old time's sake." In her haste to get out of the apartment and away from Di, Sandy walked to the bar shortly after their conversation, arrived forty five minutes early, and ordered a beer. She nearing the bottom of her second when Bah showed up.

He sat across from her and nodded towards Sandy's first empty glass, which had been pushed towards the end of the table in an attempt to have someone come by and collect it. "Gonna be that kind of night, huh?"

"I was nervous," she blurted out. Her mind caught up a moment later and she shook her head. "Sorry."

Bah laughed. "I get it. I was, too—not really sure why, though. You're clearly not intimidating."

Sandy smiled and tipped her glass, draining it. "Clearly not." She moved to stand to get another, but Bah pushed his full beer across the table to her.

"Have this one. I didn't realize I had so much catching up to do." He slid back out of the booth and approached the bar again. When he returned, he had two more glasses.

About an hour later, it would have been impossible to discern whether either Bah or Sandy had been nervous about meeting that evening. "I meant to ask before—why are you here in town tonight?" Sandy asked.

Bah sipped his beer. "I'm going to a wedding tomorrow with Buzzy and Gayle. Did you ever meet Mark Johnson? Magic?" He paused for Sandy to nod and continued, "he's getting married in Madison tomorrow afternoon, and so we're driving out in the morning."

"Oh," Sandy said. "So this—" she gestured at the collection of glasses at the end of the table, "is a _really_ bad idea, then?"

"For sure," Bah said, and they laughed. "It's the first time everyone has gotten together since we were all at the White House. I'm actually really excited to see everybody."

"Really? It's been that long? That's kind of sad," Sandy said. "Is that normal? Do you usually get a whole team of players together after the season ends?"

"Definitely not," he said. "Life goes on."

"Even for a team of miracle men," she said, and Bah snorted into his glass.

"Yeah, I guess," he said. Then he looked up at her and frowned. "Can I tell you something? Two things?"

Sandy straightened up in her seat. "Yes, please."

Bah cleared his throat. "Magic said he wanted to introduce me to someone at this wedding. A girl."

"Oh?" Sandy's jaw suddenly felt tight.

"Yeah." He rested his chin on his fist, watching her. "And, you know, I've been looking forward to seeing all of the boys and catching up, but then I remember that I have to meet this girl and I—" he paused, sighing. "It makes me less excited."

Sandy wasn't quite sure how to respond to this. "Does she seem like she won't be nice?"

Bah ran a hand through his hair, continuing to watch Sandy's face, apparently looking for a certain reaction. "Oh, I'm sure she's great. And it's always weirdly flattering to have somebody set you up with someone they know. I just—" he hesitated again. "Have you been seeing anybody?"

" _No_." Sandy was caught off guard by the question. "There's—well, there's one guy at work who has been trying to talk to me all summer, but I'm just not interested," she explained. Di's words from earlier rang in her head, and Sandy looked down into her glass to avoid looking at Bah.

"How come?"

She shrugged, continuing to stare at the half-inch of beer remaining in her glass. "I don't know. I think I need to be by myself for a while and just see if I can stand my own company."

"And Di's company, right?"

Sandy looked up, surprised at him reading her mind before realizing that he was talking about her living with Di. "Right."

Bah had a thoughtful expression on his face as he peered at Sandy. "It hasn't been fun, has it?"

"What hasn't?" She caught Bah's eye and sighed. "No. It hasn't. It's been awful." Sandy had been denying herself the luxury of admitting this for a while and it felt like a load had been taken off by doing so.

They were quiet for a few moments, both feeling extremely sorry for themselves, before Sandy spoke. "What was the second thing?"

"Hmm?"

"You said you wanted to tell me two things. What was the second one?"

"Oh." Bah grinned down at the table, suddenly sheepish. "Well, this is kind of embarrassing—you know how we ran into each other today downtown?" Sandy nodded, and he cleared his throat before continuing, "that wasn't actually just a coincidence. I wanted to see you when I was in town, so I went to the store, you know, where you worked before, and I talked to this lady who told me that you didn't work there anymore."

Sandy put her forehead into her hand. "And she just _told_ you where I work now? Was it Charlotte?"

Bah shrugged. "I don't know. And yeah, she told me. She gave up a surprising amount of information. I could have been _anybody_ , you know? And so yeah, anyway, I was downtown after my meeting with Art thinking I'd wander by your office and maybe see you. That felt less like I was stalking you than going inside and asking if you were there—but then there you were, just eating a sandwich in the rain."

"That's…" Sandy narrowed her eyes, considering what he had just told her.

"Oh, it's creepy. The word you're looking for is 'creepy.' I know. That's why I figured I should tell you."

She agreed for a moment but then, remembering what she herself had done while Bah was in Rochester, stopped and grimaced at him.

He looked surprised. "What?"

"Can I tell _you_ something?"

"Sure."

"When I found out you were in Rochester—" Sandy stopped short. "Finish your drink before I tell you this. It's terrible." She picked up her glass and drank what was left in it.

"Okay." Bah obediently did the same.

When he had put his empty glass back down on the table, Sandy cleared her throat. "All right. When I found out you were in Rochester, I wanted to know how you were doing because—well—you know," she said, shrugging. "Anyway, I didn't know how I'd do that, and so I ended up tracking down the number for the arena and calling there. And the night that I called just happened to be the night that you got sent to the hospital." As Sandy spoke, she slowly put her face into her hands.

Bah was quiet for a moment after she finished speaking. "So—" he began.

But Sandy, remembering suddenly and figuring she might as well tell the whole truth while she was revealing things, looked up and cut him off. "And _also_ , oh God. Also. Di called there one day because we were drinking and she wanted to get your phone number for where you were living, and she got it from the people at the office. They gave it to her." She put her head back into her hands.

This time Bah waited to see if Sandy had finished telling her story. He frowned. "Did she pretend to be my sister?"

Sandy let out a groan and nodded. "Oh, God. That's right. You were there."

"I was." He sat back in his seat and put a hand through his hair. "I thought it was so weird that she'd lost my number—I had just given it to her earlier that week."

Sandy made a muffled, tortured sound into her hands.

"So wait," Bah continued, his brow furrowed, "you called the night I got hurt in Hershey?"

She looked up. " _Yes_ ," she said. "They told me that you were carried off the ice on a _stretcher_."

"Yep," he said, grinning. "That's pretty rotten timing for you."

"So, after that happened, I felt weird about calling," she said.

"How come?"

Sandy picked up her glass and, finding it empty, put it back down. "Well, besides the fact that it was a bizarre thing to be doing," she said, "there was nothing I could do. I found out that you were hurt and in the hospital and I couldn't help or talk to anyone because it wasn't my business anymore." She stopped talking and looked up at Bah. "Do you think I'm crazy?"

He shook his head. "No, I don't. I get it—it's tough. I knew how to get a hold of you, but I might as well have just vanished. And, I mean, we're not going to pretend that _I_ didn't call you, are we?"

Sandy, who had all but entirely forgotten about this, laughed. "Oh my God. I guess we're not. What was happening with you that night?"

"I don't know," he said, rolling his eyes. "Me and the boys had a couple of beers over at the Village, and I guess I snuck off. I hung up on you because Verchota came up behind me and ripped the phone out of my hands."

"Oh, wow," Sandy said, and then her smile faded slightly as she added, "I kept thinking you'd call again. I actually almost drove out there."

"To Lake Placid?" Bah asked, and she nodded. "I would have been pretty surprised to see that." He frowned. "It's good to know that you had a hard time with it, too. Well, not _good_ , I guess. You know what I mean."

They were both silent for a while, trying to think of something to talk about that wasn't terribly sad. Eventually, just for the sake of saying something, Sandy asked, "so tell me about this _girl_ you're meeting."

He rolled his eyes. "I don't know. They haven't told me much about her—I think they know her from college. The last time I talked to Magic about a month ago he said he thought we'd really hit it off."

"Do you think they're setting you two up because you're the only single people they know?"

Bah was silent for a moment, a thoughtful expression on his face. "Well, now I do," he said, and they laughed. "I'm sure she's—you know what?—I actually have a picture of her."

Sandy leaned forward. "What?" He was digging in his pocket for his wallet. "You keep a picture of her in your _wallet_? I thought you'd never met her!"

"I haven't," he said. "Magic gave it to me. He _literally_ wouldn't let me _not_ take it. And so I put it in my wallet and forgot about it until just now. I swear to God," he added, when Sandy raised her eyebrows at him. "Do you want to see it or no? Is this too weird?"

"It is, but let's see it anyway," she said, gesturing for him to hand the photo over. He slid it across the table.

The photograph was of two girls; a blonde and a brunette, laughing at something behind the camera. They were both wearing bright red sweatshirts with a white "W" printed on them.

"She's the one with brown hair," Bah said. He grinned. "I guess she's a good friend of Magic's fiancée. He said they specifically thought this girl would be a good match for me because she's a brunette, seeing as I get 'have trouble" with blondes."

"That's one way of saying it."

" _And_ she loves hockey." Bah gave her a knowing look.

Sandy laughed. "Hard to compete with that."

"Did you _want_ to compete with that?"

There was a deeply awkward pause while Sandy tried to work out how to respond to this. After a moment she was saved by the bartender calling out from behind the bar to tell them that the place was closing in ten minutes.

The full magnitude of the multiple beer she'd had was not clear to Sandy until she stood up and started walking out of the bar with Bah. "I'm… drunk," she said, walking past him as he held the door open for her.

Bah laughed. "Well, good. This was a lot of fun."

"Yeah."

"I'm glad we can still, you know, talk and spend time together," he continued. "It's nice."

She nodded, content to just let him talk while the parking lot spun slowly around her. "Yeah."

"Do you think maybe—you know, the next time I'm in town—I could give you a call and we could meet up again? Just for dinner or something? I'll probably be back a few more times this summer."

"Sure," Sandy said. She dug in her purse for a pen and some paper and scribbled down her number. "Just give me a call whenever. It would be fun to see you again before you go—wherever you're going in the fall."

He took the number and smiled. "Yeah. That'll get figured out eventually," he said, starting to back away. "I'll talk to you sooner or later, okay?"

"Okay," she said. As she watched him walk away, she noticed that he was wobbling as he lumbered in the direction of his car. "Hey, Bah?"

Bah paused, looking back at her over his shoulder. "Yep?"

"You shouldn't drive."

"I don't have far to go," he said. "Buzzy and Gayle live just over there." He gestured in what Sandy assumed was the general direction of the Schneiders' home.

Sandy felt conflicted. On one hand, she knew that Bah was too drunk to drive. On the other, she was also drunk and she wasn't sure she trusted herself to be in the apartment with him. "Why don't you call them from my place? Or maybe we can see if Di is up and she can drive you back."

Bah, who had turned back to his car and was trying and failing to unlock it, looked up again. "Really? Back to your place?"

"No, no—not _that_ ," she said. "You're not wrapping your car around a tree tonight. Not the night before you meet your _soulmate_."

"Oh, you're absolutely right," Bah said, and jogged back over to where Sandy was standing. "Lead the way."

They walked back to the apartment mostly in silence. Sandy spent the time trying to remain upright and thinking about how she needed to organize Bah a ride home as quickly as possible so as to minimize the time that they spent alone together in the apartment. Their hands, swinging as they walked, brushed against each other several times, warming Sandy's cheeks and ears like she was a kid in middle school. She felt immediately ridiculous. He's seen you naked on multiple occasions, she thought. You should be able to touch his hand without losing your mind. This thought was followed shortly by a desperate hope that Di was awake at the apartment, despite it being well after midnight.

The apartment was dark and Di's bedroom door was closed when they arrived. "Nobody home," Bah said in a singsongy, full-volumed voice. "You weren't kidding—this _is_ close to my old place."

Sandy shushed him. She walked halfway down the hallway and paused, thinking of what Di's reaction would be to finding out that she'd brought Bah home. Coming to the conclusion that she didn't want to deal with it, Sandy came back into the kitchen where Bah was filling his hands with water from the tap and drinking out of them. "I couldn't find the glasses," he said, pulling his shirt up to wipe his mouth. "Did you wake her up?"

Sandy shook her head, struck by a memory of Bah coming to the house to stay over after the team Christmas party. She had to take a deep breath. "No, let's just let her sleep. I just remembered she has to work early tomorrow," she lied. "Here, do you maybe want a glass to drink out of?" She turned away from him, pulled open the cupboard where the girls kept the cups, and quickly shut it again. Bah had seen what she'd been trying to hide, though.

All of the mugs he'd given her were sitting on the top shelf.

Bah cleared his throat. "It's okay—I'm not thirsty anymore."

"Okay," Sandy said. She'd never noticed before how small the kitchen was. She felt as if they were nearly standing chest to chest, and took a step back, bumping up against the countertop. "Do you—do you want to use the phone and call Buzz?" she asked, gesturing at the phone on the wall.

"Oh," Bah said, as if remembering. "Yeah, sure."

Sandy hopped up on the kitchen counter and folded her arms, trying to put more distance between them, while Bah dug in his wallet for the Schneiders' phone number. "Thank God I thought to write it down before I left tonight," he said, more to himself than to Sandy, and picked up the phone. He got about halfway through dialling the number before he paused, lightly bouncing the receiver off of his cheek.

She glanced up and saw him looking at her. "What?"

Bah hung up the phone. He took a step closer, testing whether she'd protest, and then another, and put his hands on the counter on either side of her legs. Then he stared up at her in the moonlit kitchen, his face inches from hers.

"I missed you," he said. "So much."

Sandy opened her mouth and closed it a few times before accepting what they'd both sort of known as soon as they left the bar: Bah wasn't going back to the Schneiders' place that night.

The next morning, Sandy awoke to the unwelcome alarm of a throbbing headache. She rolled over and, encountering Bah, recoiled and groaned. He didn't move, and so she poked him gently in the neck with her finger. "Bah. Wake up. Are you dead?"

Bah swatted her hand away and burrowed his face further into the pillow. "I wish." Slowly raising his head, he turned to look at her and smiled. "Not that that's your fault or anything, for the record."

"Oh, God," she said, sitting up and brushing her hair away from her face. "What time do you have to leave? What time _is_ it?"

He patted the bedside table for his watch and, finding it instead on his wrist, checked the time. "It's just after seven, he said. "We leave in a couple of hours. They probably think I really am dead, though. I should—"

Di was suddenly at the bedroom door, gently knocking but not coming in, which was definitely unusual for her. Sandy clapped her hand over Bah's mouth. "Hey, I made breakfast and coffee if you're getting up."

"Yep," Sandy said. "Yeah, thanks. I'll be out in just a sec."

"Okay. I made enough for Bah, too," Di replied, and they heard her going back down the hall.

Sandy dropped her hand. "Fuck. She knew. Why is she even up so early?"

"Didn't you say she works early today?"

"That was a lie."

"Oh, great." Bah rolled over and swung his legs over the side of the bed. "Is that a bad thing for her to know that I'm here? It's not like she doesn't know who I am."

"Yeah," she said, getting up too and tossing his shirt at him over the bed. She didn't want to tell him that it felt a lot like she had proved Di right.

To Di's credit, she acted like having Bah suddenly appear out of Sandy's bedroom was not surprising or even remotely interesting. She poured Bah a cup of coffee and pulled the small table in the kitchen away from the wall to make room for a third person to sit there. Sandy sent him out first and took her time trying to make herself look less disheveled—as if Bah had just slept over platonically, perhaps. When she wandered out of her room a few minutes after Bah, he and Di were seated at the table, laughing like old friends.

"There she is," Di said, and gestured at the plate of bacon and eggs she had made up for Sandy, winking at her when Bah's attention was focussed on his own plate. "Bah and I were just talking about the wedding he's going to today. In—Madison, right?"

"Right," Bah said through a mouthful of food. "I should probably call Buzz soon so he doesn't send out a search party for me. He expected me to come home," he added to Di. "Last night."

Sandy closed her eyes and took a sip of coffee.

"Oh," Di said. "You didn't _plan_ to stay over?—ouch!" She frowned at Sandy, who had kicked her under the table.

Bah ignored this. "Nope. I told him who I was meeting up with, though, so hopefully they just think I'm with you. Do you think I could get a ride back over to my car?" he asked Sandy.

"Sure," Sandy said. She started eating faster.

Once they finished, Bah phoned Buzz to confirm that he was, in fact, alive and well. "I'll be over in just a bit," Bah said. "Don't even think about leaving without me."

Di assured the two of them that she didn't need help washing the dishes ("since you're in such a big hurry to get out of here," she hissed at Sandy) and hustled them out the door.

Bah was quiet for the first half of the car ride back over to Hubert's. Finally, he said, "were you embarrassed to have me stay over?"

Sandy looked over at him, surprised. "No. Not at all. Why would you…" she let the question tail off. It didn't need to be answered. "Sorry."

"It's fine," he said, shrugging. "I don't really understand, but—"

"Di just said some things before I left last night that made me feel—I don't know—a little uncomfortable, and it seemed like bringing you home was doing exactly what she thought I'd do," Sandy said, hearing how ridiculous this sounded as the words came out of her mouth. "It's hard to explain."

Bah let out a short laugh. "I guess it must be."

After driving in silence for a while longer, Sandy burst out, "I thought I was _past_ this, okay? And I know that sounds awful, but I felt like I'd put so much effort into moving on and trying to be better for these past months, and I really started to believe it, but then you just had to _show up_ and—and—" She stopped talking and shrugged.

"What? 'And' what?" Bah demanded, his jaw tight.

"You make me remember why I didn't want to be past it," Sandy said in a quiet voice, not taking her eyes off the road.

"Oh," Bah said. "So, then, what does this all mean—you know, for us?"

She turned to look at him. "I don't know. Do you think things should change now?"

" _I_ don't know, that's why I asked you," Bah said. "If I'd had my way, we wouldn't have ended to begin with."

Sandy pulled the car into the lot in front of Hubert's and parked. "It's not that simple," she said. "The things I had issues with before are still issues—you don't know where you're going to be living in the fall, Bah. It's the end of July!"

He slumped in his seat a little and stared out the windshield, considering this. "I don't know what to tell you. The hockey stuff hasn't changed—it isn't going to. But the fact that I want you in my life hasn't changed, either. I kind of thought you felt the same way."

"I do," she said. "But what are we going to do, talk on the phone every night? You're right, the hockey situation hasn't changed, and that was what gave me the most trouble. I'd still never see you."

"So, what, then," he said, throwing up his hands. "I'll just call you every time I'm in the area and we'll sleep together, and then I'll just go on my way? Is that what you want for us?"

She shook her head. "Of course not. You know how I feel about you—"

"Do I?" Bah shot back. "Do I know? I _think_ I know, but honestly, Sandy, I never once heard you say it."

Sandy clenched her hands into fists. "Would it help? Would it make it any better for you to hear me say that I love you, too? Because of course I do, Bah, but I'm just saying—you should think logically about it. What would make it easier this time around?"

Bah, whose face had lit up at her words for a brief moment, sighed. "I don't know. I guess I kind of hoped we could work together on that."

Sandy didn't know what to say to that, so she sighed, too. Then she had a thought. "What day is it today?"

"Saturday?"

"No, I mean, what day of the month?"

"The twenty-sixth," he said. "Why do you ask?"

She shook her head. "I was just thinking—it must be almost exactly a year since I moved here. That feels like it was such a long time ago."

He gave her a sad little smile. "I guess a lot can change in a year, huh?"

"Yeah," Sandy said. "Kind of feels like a lot is the same, too."


	26. Chapter 26

**Chapter 26 - August 2 - 3, 1980**

The afternoon sun was blazing overhead as Sandy stepped outside. She crouched to make sure that her shoes were tied before taking off running down the street. She had gotten back into the habit of running regularly, and so had long passed the point of having to stop to throw up into the gutter, but it was hot outside and so she tried to take it easy.

It had been a week since Bah had stayed over, and Sandy hadn't heard from him. They had left things somewhat unresolved the previous Saturday. He had, after it became clear that there wasn't much else to be said, turned to leave the car with a disappointed expression on his face.

"Can I still call you the next time I'm here?" he'd asked, his hand on the door handle.

Sandy had nodded. "Of course, Bah."

Bah had given her hand a quick squeeze and then gotten out of the car.

Sandy was fairly certain that the promise of getting together again when Bah was in town was of the type that old friends catching up usually made—well-intentioned, but ultimately a non-starter. The irony in the fact that, again, Bah held all the power in the situation, as she had given him her phone number but he hadn't mentioned where he actually lived or how to contact him, was not lost on Sandy.

The perspective she had gained from the months of being alone had helped, she thought. Because, really, not a lot had changed in their situations. He probably wasn't going to be playing hockey in Minnesota, and so it would be difficult to maintain a relationship of any kind without bankrupting both of them, either with travel expenses or running up phone bills. Sandy was glad she'd told Bah that she loved him, because it had been a worry of hers that he would never know this, but the timing wasn't right. Sometimes two people could feel very strongly about each other and still have it not work out. It was nobody's fault—just bad luck.

These were the types of semi-logical thoughts that Sandy repeated to make herself feel better. In reality, having seen Bah again had re-opened a freshly healed wound.

Sandy ran for a while through the streets, not really keeping track of where she was going, and ended up near Will and Jenny's house. She hadn't seen them for a few weeks—they'd been staying in a lot in the evenings, trying to get Noah on a normal sleeping schedule—and so she decided to drop by for a quick visit. Slowing to a walk, Sandy approached the house and knocked on the door.

It took a long time for Jenny to open the door. When she did, she peered out at Sandy with a bewildered expression on her face. "Hey there, stranger. What's going on?"

"I was in the neighbourhood," Sandy said, wiping her sweaty hair out of her eyes. "What are you guys doing?"

"Uh—" Jenny looked back over her shoulder and then pulled the door open wider to let Sandy inside. "Nothing, actually. I've been washing diapers all afternoon and Will is—out back, I guess. Come on in."

Sandy followed her inside. Noah was laying on his stomach on a blanket on the floor, chewing on a plastic toy. She crouched beside the baby and rumpled the fluffy blond hair on his head. "How's it going, buddy?"

Noah continued to drool on the toy, barely noticing that she was there.

"He's been so hot," Jenny replied, stooping to pick him up. "If he wakes up in the night he's always the sweatiest child I've ever seen. Maybe you're sneaking in and taking him out running with you?" she added, grinning at Sandy, who was mopping up her forehead and neck with her shirt.

Sandy laughed. "Sorry. I wouldn't normally just show up without telling you—I didn't realize where I was until I looked up and I was here. I thought it was fate."

"Oh, that's okay. You're always allowed to show up here."

As Sandy sank into a sitting position on the floor, not wanting to get the couch all sweaty, she heard a clattering sound coming from the back of the house. "What's that?"

Jenny was looking in the direction of the noise, and a concerned expression flitted across her face for a second before she turned to look at Sandy again. "We have a raccoon living somewhere back there. That's probably just Will chasing it."

"He's out there trying to catch a raccoon with his bare hands?"

"Yep," Jenny said. "That's what he's doing."

This was Sandy's first, glaring clue that something was strange, but she shrugged it off by reasoning with herself that _she_ was the one who had just shown up unexpectedly. They were new parents who maybe weren't prepared to have company over.

"Here, do you want a glass of water or something? Take him for a sec." Jenny was standing up, handing the baby over to Sandy.

Noah immediately squirmed in her arms, looking around at Sandy's face and, apparently not seeing anything he liked there, let out a loud squawk. Sandy stood, too, and followed Jenny into the kitchen.

"He hates me," she said, awkwardly trying to bounce Noah to settle him down.

Jenny filled up a glass from the tap. "Oh, he doesn't hate you. I think he sees how much you look like his dad and it confuses him because you're clearly not him." She reached out and took Noah, who was now wailing, back.

"That's a nice way of thinking about it," Sandy replied.

"He doesn't hate anybody. He's a baby." Jenny lightly bounced Noah, making comforting sounds, and he quietened down. "See? There we go. It's just hard to be a baby sometimes, right, buddy? Let's sit." She shepherded Sandy in the direction of the table, making what seemed like a special effort to get Sandy to sit in a chair where she would be facing away from the window. Then Jenny craned her neck to stare out into the back yard like she was desperate to try and get a glimpse of something lurking out there.

Sandy gazed at her, perplexed. "What are you looking at?"

"Hmm?" Jenny looked back over at Sandy. "Nothing. What are _you_ looking at?"

"You," Sandy said. "You're being weird. What's going on?"

"No, I'm not," Jenny said, in the way people do when they deny being weird. "Nothing's going on. I must just be tired. But enough about me. What about you? Anything new and exciting happen to you lately?" She raised her eyebrows.

Something suddenly clicked in Sandy's mind. "Oh. You talked to Di, didn't you?"

Jenny shook her head. "Nope."

"Are you sure?"

"Sure, I'm sure," Jenny said. "Why, _should_ I talk to her?"

Sandy sighed. "I don't know. I thought maybe she told you about something that happened to me last week."

"She didn't," Jenny said. "I promise. What was this big thing that happened to you last week?"

Sandy didn't answer right away, and so the two women just stared at each other for a while, the silence punctuated by Noah babbling in Jenny's arms. She still seemed a little _too_ eager to hear the story, and so Sandy wasn't sure she believed her. It wasn't that she didn't want to tell Jenny, either, but the other woman was acting so oddly that Sandy decided to keep the secret temporarily. "I found a new way to get to work that takes half the time," she said after a moment, hearing how lame the lie sounded as the words came out of her mouth.

"Oh." Jenny blinked. "Well, that's good. Why did you think Di would have told me that?"

Not really having an answer, Sandy shrugged.

Noah let out another sharp squawk that made both of them jump. Jenny bounced him gently on her knee. "Now _you're_ the one being weird."

They heard the back door of the house open and Will came inside, poking his head around the corner. "Oh, wow—I didn't know you were coming over," he said when he spotted Sandy, shooting a look at Jenny. "I didn't hear you knock, I was in the backyard—"

"Chasing the raccoon. I already told her," Jenny said, cutting him off. "Did you get him?"

Will shook his head. "No, he got away. Sucker's probably halfway to Minneapolis by now. I'm not sure what I'd do if I ever caught him—doesn't really make sense that I wouldn't just set a trap or something. For a raccoon."

"I don't know, Will," Jenny said, shaking her head at her husband. "You're the doctor, not me."

Sandy left shortly afterwards, declining an invitation to stay for dinner. The only explanation for why Jenny and Will were acting so strangely was that Di had told them about Sandy seeing Bah. She couldn't think of anything else that could have happened, but she also couldn't think of why Di would have done this. None of it made any sense.

When she arrived home, Sandy heard the sounds of Di and Peter talking hurriedly in the apartment as she walked down the hall. Then she heard a door slam inside. They were standing in the kitchen and turned to face her in unison when Sandy came in.

"Oh, hi," Di said. "You were gone a long time."

"I stopped over at Will and Jenny's," Sandy said. "What are you guys doing?"

"We're—well, we're trying to figure out what to have for dinner," Di said, pulling open the cabinet in front of her. "Do you feel like anything in particular?"

Sandy shook her head and started to reply, but noticed at that moment that there were three glasses sitting on the kitchen table, which had been pulled away from the wall to make room for another person to sit there. "Was someone else here?"

"No," Peter said. "It's just been us all day."

"Okay," Sandy said, pointing at the table, "so then who was the third person sitting with you guys there?"

"Jesus—who are you, Sherlock Holmes?" Di asked, hurrying over to pick the glasses up off the table. "It was just us."

The three of them stood for a moment in tense silence, Sandy and Di eyeing each other up while Peter stood off to the side. "Did you tell Jenny about Bah?" Sandy finally asked.

Di's mouth fell open. "No. Why would you think that?"

"When I was over there just now, she acted like she was trying to get me to talk about something specific." Sandy watched her friend's face as she spoke, trying to gauge her reaction. But Di's face remained almost aggressively blank. "Literally nothing interesting has happened to me in months, so I think that's what it was. It had to be, but I don't get why you guys would lie about it."

"I didn't say anything to her," Di said. "I swear. I wouldn't have. Peter, did you?"

Peter looked startled. "No! If you ever find out that I called up Sandy's sister in law to gossip with her, call an ambulance. Something would have to be wrong with me."

Suddenly very frustrated with the mystery novel she was living in, Sandy threw up her hands. "Well, something is _going on_ ," she said. "And I don't want to talk to any of you until you start acting _normal_ again." Without another word, she disappeared into her bedroom.

The next day, when Sandy came back to the apartment from getting groceries in the late afternoon, Bah's car was parked on the street.

Feeling a little uneasy, Sandy peered into the drivers side window as she hauled her bags past. He wasn't in the car. Steeling herself for the possibility that he'd dropped by unexpectedly to visit, she went inside. She poked her head through the door as she entered, trying to get a glimpse of Di or Bah or anybody in the apartment. "I'm home," she tried calling out. "Anybody here?"

"Well, I just watched you notice my car when you pulled in, so you _have_ to know that I'm here."

Sandy straightened up at the sound of Bah's voice and came fully through the door. "Oh."

He was sitting at the kitchen table, his hands folded in front of him. He grinned at her. "How was the store?"

"It was—um—good—where's everyone else?" Sandy interrupted herself to ask the question. "Are you just here by yourself?"

"I haven't been for long. Di was here with the senator before," Bah said. "They left to go eat or do a campaign rally or something. Do you want to sit?"

A little surprised at being invited to sit in her own home, Sandy shook her head and gestured to the bags in her hands. "No, I have to—"

"Oh—oh! Right. Yeah, no, go ahead."

She set to work putting away the groceries, watching Bah out of the corner of her eyes. He kept fidgeting with his hands and bouncing his knee up and down. He looked like Will after several cups of coffee.

"So," Sandy said after a while, "how was the wedding?"

Bah continued to grip his hands together tightly. "It was good. It was really nice. Everybody was there, and we all got to catch up, and it was…" He paused, sighing. "Nice."

Sandy slid a carton of eggs into the fridge. "Well, good. Nice. Do you want coffee or something to drink?"

"I'll just have whatever you have."

She glanced up at the clock on the wall. It was shortly after five. Predicting, somewhat pessimistically, that the conversation might require it, Sandy pulled two beer out of the fridge and passed him one.

"Thanks," Bah said. He turned the bottle over in his hands and then set it on the table without opening it. He looked up at her and grinned. "Don't you want to hear about the girl?"

Sandy sank down into the chair across the table from him and opened her beer. "I don't know, do I?"

He laughed. "I don't know. Let me rephrase, I guess— _can_ I tell you about her?"

She sighed. "Sure. What was she like?"

"She was…" He paused, considering it. "She was all right. I mean, nothing _happened_ or anything. I think she was kind of embarrassed to be set up with somebody like that. I also don't think I made a great impression," he added with a grimace.

"Why's that?"

Bah cleared his throat. "Well, me and the boys started drinking before the wedding started and so I wasn't in great condition when I actually _met_ her. And when I did—" He laughed a little to himself. "When I sat down in front of this nice, smart, beautiful girl, all I could do was talk about you."

"Oh." Sandy tried and failed to suppress the grin that was spreading across her face. "And that didn't go over well?"

"If you can believe that," Bah laughed. "Magic is _not_ impressed with me for blowing it. I don't think anybody will set me up with one of their friends again any time soon."

"What did you say to her? About me, I mean."

"Well, that's partially what I'm here to talk to you about." He fiddled with his unopened bottle of beer between his hands. "I'm—"

"Do you not want that?" Sandy nodded in the direction of his beer.

"Hmm?" Bah looked down at it as if noticing it was there for the first time. "Yeah. Well, no, I guess. I don't know. I have to drive back up to Duluth later, so probably not. Technically I'm in pre-season training right now, too, so I should take it easy on the booze for a bit—that's something I needed to tell you, too," he said, as if to steer the conversation back on track. "I figured out where I'm going next year."

Sandy reached across the table, took the bottle from him, and got up to put it back into the fridge. "Really? You figured that out in a week? Is that normal?" She filled up a glass of water and brought it back for him.

"I think I said I was working on options," Bah said, accepting the glass.

"Where are you going?"

He cleared his throat. "Switzerland." The word hung in the air between them like a helium balloon.

"Oh." Sandy felt her stomach sink a little.

"Yeah. I mean, I figured I'd better be realistic about my chances of making it to the NHL. I didn't even get a shot in Buffalo this year because they wanted all three of us—me and Buzzy and Pav. And Pav's not going to the NHL yet. He wants to go play in Europe, and so we're going and playing on this team in Switzerland. Lugano," he said, as if that made a difference.

"So—so then—" Sandy struggled for a moment to respond, but eventually gave up and fell silent.

"Yeah," Bah said. "And that's why I came to talk to you today. I've actually been in town for a few days, and—"

"Oh," Sandy said again, suddenly realizing. "It was you, wasn't it? Yesterday? Everyone was talking to you. That's how Jenny knew about us and why there were three cups here."

He grinned. "It would have been a lot easier to sneak around and meet up with all your family and friends if you'd stop turning up everywhere I went. But yeah, that was me. I was at Will and Jenny's place when you showed up—they hustled me out the back door before you could see me. I knocked over a trash can back there and Will made me clean it all up before I was allowed to leave. And I was in there yesterday when you came home," he added, pointing to the closet next to the door. "I'd been here talking to Di and Pete, and Will said he'd have you stay for dinner so I'd have time to do that, but—"

"I left because they were both acting like they were hiding a dead body," Sandy said.

"Yeah? I would have thought Jenny would keep it together."

She shook her head. "And you were just—hiding in the closet? Why?"

"Didn't want you to see me just yet," Bah replied with a shrug.

He was continuing to smile at her like it was something they could laugh over, but Sandy was still deeply confused. "I don't get it. Why didn't you want me to see you?"

Bah rolled his eyes. "Well, the plan was for me to not sneak around at all, but Will had to take some time to think about what I was there saying to them. He—"

Sandy gestured at him to stop talking as a dreadful thought suddenly occurred to her. "Wait—you're not here to propose, are you?"

He gave her an exasperated look. "Yeah. Things ended badly with us in February, and then five months later we met up and slept together, and now I'd like to ask you to be my _bride_." He paused, looking sheepish, and then added, "what I'm _actually_ here to ask is crazier than that, maybe."

"What are you here to ask?"

"Well," he said, taking a deep breath, "look. I'm crazy about you. I still am. I'm not, you know, delusional or anything about thinking that I'll _always_ be, because that's just not how it works in real life." He had started twisting his hands around again, looking like he was trying to tie his own fingers in knots. "If I _had_ to move on, I can't imagine that I wouldn't be able to do that. It would be hard—it's _been_ hard, but I'd figure it out. You know?"

Sandy stared down at his hands on the table, somewhat worried that he'd hurt himself. "I guess so."

"Right. And so I've been trying to get along for these past few months, and every time I meet someone and think I might move on, I find myself comparing them to you."

"Hmm." Sandy looked up and caught Bah's eyes. They just watched each other for a few moments, waiting for Sandy to ask the question that she wanted to ask and that _he_ wanted her to ask. Finally, she said, "how do they compare?"

Bah shook his head. "It depends. Sometimes I feel like they'd be better for me, and I get annoyed with myself, because I'm still hung up on you. It's—over, you know? It's _been_ over for months and I can't get past it. And then sometimes I know it would never work with other people, but then _that's_ frustrating too, because with you I never got the sense that it wasn't going to work." He ran a hand through his hair, making it stand up a little bit in the front. "I feel like we never got a fair try before it ended."

"So, then," Sandy said, "how do you think it would work better with you in _Switzerland_ and me back here?"

"Oh, no, that would _never_ work," Bah agreed. He cleared his throat and squared his shoulders. "But it might work if you came with me."

There was a long moment of stunned silence while Sandy tried to process this. "You—you want me to move _with you_ to Switzerland?"

"Well, no. I mean, _yeah_ , kind of. But not right away. What I'm asking for _today_ is just for two weeks," Bah said. "They're flying me out there to see the city and meet the coaches and fill out some paperwork at the end of month, and they gave me two round-trip tickets. I think you should come."

For about ten seconds, Sandy was only able to shake her head and sputter incoherently. When she was finally able to string together a thought, she said, "Bah, that's crazy. I can't do that. I can't just take off and go to Europe with you. It doesn't work like that."

"Why not?" he asked. "Really, why can't it work like that? If you can't get time off from work, just quit. You don't like it anyway."

"I know, but—"

"And it's just for two weeks. You'd be able to leave whenever you want if it's not working out. We can say there's an emergency back home. You said before, back in February, that you didn't think we'd spent a whole week together, so why not take two, with me, in Switzerland? What could be better than that? Maybe we could take the weekend and go to Paris—for real this time. France is right next to Switzerland, right?" There was a moment of silence as both of them realized that they weren't sure if this was correct and chose to not say anything.

Eventually Sandy put her face in her hands and groaned. "People don't just _do_ things like this. They don't just leave—" she stopped talking abruptly, remembering that she had done this exact thing, on a somewhat smaller scale, when she'd first left Everett. She looked up at him. "I don't know."

Bah shrugged. "It's up to you. I thought of every reason why you shouldn't go, and I have counter arguments for all of them—except for you genuinely not wanting to be with me. So if that's the case, just let me know." He reached across the table and rested his hand on hers. "I want to be with _you_ , though. I want to _try_. And then at the end of it, if we've figured out that we have nothing in common, then we at least know that. We can go our separate ways, and I'll finally be able to sleep at night. But if not..." He let the sentence tail off, giving her an optimistic shrug. "We'll figure it out. Just think about it. You can say no, and if you do, I'll leave you alone and you won't hear from me again." He shrugged. "No problem."

But there _were_ problems, Sandy thought, no matter how concisely Bah was able to state the contrary in a little speech. She knew that, with what he was suggesting, she could go with him for two weeks, have it not work out, and then come home having had a free trip to Switzerland, but that didn't seem to be a likely result. What seemed more likely was that she would no longer be able to push down her feelings for Bah and would end up staying with him. If she said yes to this, Sandy knew, she was saying yes to much more than the trip. She suddenly felt paralyzed.

A long moment passed, and Sandy finally said, mostly to be saying something, anything, "why did you need to talk to Will and Jenny about this? And Di and Peter?"

This didn't seem to be the response Bah had been looking for, but he took it in stride anyway. "Well, it's not like you don't have anything going on here. I get that. You have your friends and family and a new little nephew to get to know. I needed to see if they'd be okay with you leaving—if it came to that—before I even mentioned it to you. And also," he added, grinning, "I figured that if I could convince Will that this was a good idea, it must _really_ be a good idea."

"So were you able to convince him?"

Bah continued to grin at her. "I went back there today, and he said that his opinion ultimately didn't make a difference, but he wanted you to be happy, and that he'd noticed that you didn't seem as happy these days. Now, I think that's as close as I'll ever get to a compliment from your brother, but he's also right." He sat back in his chair. "This is your choice. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't putting you in a complicated situation with all of them—well, I mean, no more complicated than it already is."

"Well, that's nice of you," Sandy said, frowning, and he laughed. She looked down at the table and sighed. "This is crazy," she said.

"I know it is. I understand that it's asking a lot. But I felt like such an idiot before for not making an effort to make it work—I just told you to leave, and I've regretted that. And so this is me, making an effort, but I just need you to trust this time around that it's for real." Bah reached both hands across the table and took hers. "I didn't stop loving you. And I don't think you stopped loving _me_ either."

He wasn't wrong, Sandy thought, but she wished he'd stop talking. Bah was saying such overwhelmingly sweet things, making her unsure if any decision she made would actually be hers. She let go of his hands and got to her feet, moving to stare out the window. Bah, gathering from this that Sandy was in deep thought, sat back in his chair again and fell silent.

It seemed too easy for Bah to be there, in her kitchen, after all the time that had passed, saying that he still loved her and that he wanted her to come with him to Switzerland. She hadn't really thought that anything like this—and certainly not _this_ specifically—was in the realm of possibility after the way they had ended things in February. Ultimately, the whole thing felt improbable because she didn't feel like she had done anything to earn it. She hadn't made an effort to really contact Bah, even though she had _had_ his phone. She had made the decision to distance herself from him. The fact that he was there in spite of this seemed unreal. This was a frustrating thought as well. She didn't know what would need to happen for her to feel like she deserved to be loved the way Bah seemed to love her.

After what felt like a long time, Sandy turned back to the table and sat down again. Bah looked up at her.

"I don't think I can do this," she said.

He blinked, and then let out a short laugh, running a hand through his hair again. "Wow," he said. "You know, I really didn't think you'd say no. Can I ask why?"

She sighed. "I'm sorry. I think I'd just end up hurting you again. I'm still—I'm still _me_ , you know? I ruined it last time, and I'm still that same person. I feel the same way about you, but nothing else has changed, either."

"Yeah." He gave her a sad little smile. They sat in silence for a moment before he spoke again. "Do you remember telling me a long time ago that you don't feel like you deserve good things in your life?"

It had been the night that she'd gone to one of his games for the first time. Sandy nodded.

"I've been thinking a lot about that lately. I don't know what makes you think that about yourself, but you're wrong. You _do_ deserve good things, Sandy. You deserve _great_ things, and I hoped I'd get to be the person to show you that. But if this is what you want, then there's nothing else for me to do," he said, and got to his feet.

She looked up at him, surprised. "Are you leaving?"

Bah gave her an exhausted look. "Yeah, I am. I can't keep doing this to myself, or to you. If you don't want to come, I can't make you. And I can't make you stop punishing yourself. You have to do that on your own."

As he turned to walk out the door, Sandy found herself at a loss for words. There was a permanence to this, a finality that made a lump rise in her throat. She understood, finally, that she had driven him away, for good this time.

In the moments after Bah left, pulling the door closed behind him, Sandy stared down at her hands, trying to make sense of what had just happened. There was a perfectly logical part of her mind that agreed with Bah—she deserved to have happiness in her life, and was entitled to the opportunity to live in a way that would bring her happiness. For whatever reason, though, a decidedly opposing part of her mind felt that any positivity was merely the starting point for the whole thing to come crashing down. Sandy took a sip of her warm beer and sighed a shaky sigh, trying not to cry.

She sat, staring blankly at the wall and considering the direction her life had taken since she had moved out of Ray's house just over a year before. She thought about her job, and how maybe in a few months a higher position would open up, and maybe she could apply. She thought about Viola, the woman who sat in front of her at work, who had been working at the company for fifteen years and had sat in the same spot every single day of her time there.

Sandy considered what her future looked like on her current path. She could keep working the same job—for a while, at least. If a position never opened up, she could always find something else. She could continue to live with Di, until Peter inevitably proposed to her and the two of them got married. Sandy could date, too, of course, but the prospect seemed daunting.

When the situation was presented, as it truly was, in front of Sandy, she had to admit that none of it was particularly appealing. It was the life she had just chosen for herself, though, in rejecting Bah's offer. The bright side, if there was one, was that she had avoided being in the situation that Gayle Schneider had described, where she would be living in an unfamiliar place, knowing no one else there but Bah. But, from Sandy's perspective in that moment, that didn't seem so bad. The possibility of getting to explore a new place with someone she loved seemed more exciting to her than it had months before, when anything remotely negative about her relationship with Bah had filled her with doubts. Those doubts suddenly felt childish and it seemed clear that she had used them as an excuse to push Bah away.

For better or worse, she realized that she wanted to risk being hurt for the possibility that she could truly be happy. Bah obviously felt the same way. Regardless of the fact that she didn't feel that she deserved his love, he had chosen to give it to her.

And she had made him leave.

Sandy got to her feet, feeling slightly panicked and lightheaded. Bah had left the apartment, but surely there was a way to find out where he was staying. Thinking that maybe he'd told Will, she hurried over to the phone and dialled the number for the house.

When Will answered, he sounded surprised to hear Sandy's voice. "What's going on?" he asked. "Did you talk to Bah?"

"I did," Sandy said. "And he's gone. I have to—"

"He's _gone_? You didn't tell him _no_ , did you? We figured for _sure_ there was no way you'd be able to—"

Will continued to harp on the other end, but Sandy wasn't listening. She saw, now that she was standing, that Bah's car was still parked outside of the building.

"Okay, thanks, Will. I gotta go. I'll talk to you later." She hung up the phone on her brother, who was still talking as she did. Then she ran out of the apartment.

Bah was sitting out on the front step of the building with his chin propped up on the palm of his hand, staring out at the street. Sandy paused, watching him for a moment through the glass of the front door before pushing it open. He didn't turn around or react until she sat down next to him.

"Thank God. I was prepared to sit out here for a while, but I'm also kind of starting to get hungry."

She wrapped her arms around her knees and sighed. "Waiting was probably a good instinct."

The two of them sat in silence for a moment before Sandy spoke again. "You're right, I think," she said.

"I'm right about a lot of things," he replied. "What specific thing are you talking about?"

She elbowed him lightly, her heart feeling so full that she thought it might burst. "I _do_ deserve to have good things in my life," she said. After a moment, she added, "I just have a hard time accepting them when they pop up."

"Oh, do you?"

"That's just a theory I'm working on." Sandy sighed. "You know, you were so patient for such a long time while we tried to do things my way," she said, staring up at the sky. The sun had started to set, throwing a warm orange glow over them.

"Right."

"Right. And it didn't work."

"Sure," Bah said. "I remember."

"So, why don't we try doing it your way this time?"

He grinned, and then reached into his pocket, pulling out an envelope. "Now, there's an idea. That's for you," he said, handing it over, "if you want it."

Sandy opened it, revealing a plane ticket for a flight leaving from Minneapolis and (after a few stops and layovers) arriving in Zurich, Switzerland.

"We have to take a train from Zurich to Lugano," Bah explained. "Apparently it goes right through the mountains, so hopefully you're not afraid of heights."

"I guess we'll find out." She drew in a shaky breath, put the ticket back in the envelope and held it to her chest. "Thank you," she said.

Bah put an arm around her shoulders, and the two of them watched the sun go down. Sandy felt terrified, but for the first time in as long as she could remember, it didn't seem like a bad thing. It felt like the beginning of something good.

* * *

 **And we're done! Thanks for reading, everybody. Fire me a message sometime if you feel like talking Miracle, or hockey, or writing, or whatever. Take care! :)**

 **\- J**


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